All the colours in my mouth

I walk into a room

and I am always the odd duck,

fixated on the gyrating colours on the wall

that somehow translate in my mind to taste.

A crimson wall elicits fresh, gleaming cherries,

just ripened on the vine,

while a brown wall is like eating someone's gum

left beneath a table.

I can never focus in shades of grey and taupe.

They taste like ground flaxseeds

on a bed of depression,

while mauve floats me away on a tasty taro cloud.

No one understands why I ask

to never be seated with a view of the parking lot;

It's shrill, dirt flavour leaching at my will to live.

As a child, I would always escape to a green room,

exploding mossy jungle trills on my tongue,

or a yellow room, where I could feel the sun on my face

and the lemon dew drops in my mouth.

But sea foam, ohhhh, a meal unto itself

that I would trade for all the creams and yellows, and even pinks, in the world;

the unexplainable taste of a curious mind.

My synesthesia has made me into a hungry cannibal.

I will never understand why

But I know that it is.

And that is it's own gift

That few will ever get to open

...but me.

The condition this poem discusses is called Synesthesia, a very common condition that often comes with Autism. The author is indeed autistic. Synesthesia tends to come with special skills as the brain uses this mechanism to create neural shortcuts and speed up learning. Most people in the world who can do very special things often have synesthesia (which is the connection of senses that aren't often connected, such as tasting sounds, seeing smells, or more abstract concepts like numbers having colour or personalities).