Beards and Ladies

There are too many colors in my face.

Ash greens and aged citrus

taupe, soot greys and quince corals.

Burnt hazelnut brown, mauve, turquoise sky…

And people don’t paint portraits.

Traffic lights are easier to read,

And sometimes faces are just traffic lights.

Codes and colors, like filing tabs caught in my hair.

And there are no chartreuse moss filing tabs,

no ice lavender or burgundies shadowed by magenta.

People ask why I don’t cover the colors.

With dabs of beige and cream

To mute the tomato splatters

The dried brick scabs.

Because people don’t paint portraits.

I didn’t know the term, when he asked,

But I knew what he was asking.

Was he asking? “We should date.”

He had lava rock maroon eyes and bright lashes

Slender shocks of orange like heron legs.

I didn’t know the term, but I knew

Sometimes people need a little help filing.

He asked if he could call me his lady.

Because girlfriend or date was too mundane.

And I laughed at the irony

Of his taste for the dramatic.

So, I was his lady beard for one day in high school.

All day they rifled with the sticky tabs in my hair.

Trying to read my colors.

“You know he’s just using you?”

But he had brave shoulders, and hair curled up like candied orange rinds.

And I thought it was a shame no one painted portraits.

His mother combed my hair and we had dinner with the church.

It felt like reading in the dark.

Straining as the colors faded into greys.

We met the youth group at a Christian coffee house.

“Well, her eyes are pretty.” The at least was implied.

He asked if I wanted air. Desperately yes. He asked,

“Can I kiss you?”

There was cake batter brick at my back, against my palms

And he was a portrait to me.

Even cast in alley shadows, marine veils over burnished copper

Made bluer by the yellow cones of street lamps

Silly, people don’t paint portraits.

And the shadows leached away my colors,

Till I was small, just a code, a tab

An experiment in filing, a foray in neon pink.

Just a girl.

Just…”No.”

Some colors we choose and others build up in us,

A wave breaking against clammy cheeks. Burning

Through our brains, in poppy reds.

But some things we can choose.

“We should break up then.” He never asked.

“I thought it was real.” He said.

I had too.

Authors note:

I don't know if I am allowed to write an authors note here. Normally I wouldn’t want to, but given the personal nature of the poem, I wanted to explain myself. The subject of this poem and myself remained friends and grew much closer together after this nightmare of a date. We attended a very closed minded religious high school and neither one of us quite fit in. I was too proud to conform to the beauty standard and he was too proud and true to himself to claim a sexual orientation. Like it was any of their business anyway. He hates to remember those years, because of how hard they were on him, but I was always inspired by how brave he was. He remains one of my close friends and inspires me still.