arcoíris

i wish i could say i was always proud of all this color,

that i didn’t make myself monochrome

to fit in,

that i didn’t live in gray areas with boundaries that blurred like

the view when taking off your glasses

or

streetlights when you’re driving too fast

i wish i could say that it didn’t feel like lying,

just hiding

just surviving

i wish i could say the pink didn’t scare me

the blush that crept onto my cheeks

like a streak of fuchsia across the sky

i turned into sunsets

whenever she’d pass by

she was the night sky when she’d speak

with a voice so deep

i became the color blue

she made me an ocean i couldn’t swim in

i kept sinking

kept thinking that they’d see me drowning

and only pull up in their lifeboats to scorn me

that they’d only want to see red in the water

so i became the perfect daughter

the spilled paint inside my heart became a purple bruise

so tender i was afraid if she touched me

i would fall apart in her arms and lose

what little i had left of my monochrome mask

i was afraid of the yellow

the sunshine that would reveal the colors inside me

if it shone too bright through the prism of my chest

i was afraid of the fields of green on the other side of my closet door

rolling fields of endless truth

and clear horizons

i became a thundering storm cloud

pouring open on a page

in a language i thought no one could read

so when she finally deciphered my tongue

my ink stopped being black

and became a fountain of color

i could wash the world away with

and paint the city in the beauty of her eyes

i wish i could say i was always proud of all this color

of all this love inside me

i wish i could say i wasnt afraid of the rainbow that came after this hidden storm of mine had passed

but my sky is more beautiful for it

and my colors will last

and last

and last