Colorless

Walk through this world colorless, they say.

Hide those emotions, you don’t want to be seen as a weak woman.

Erase your skin, you don’t want to be seen as just a person of color.

Ignore the bad, you don’t want to be seen as a Negative Nancy.

But why should I ignore these colors?

Oh, I am the blue of my sensitive soul,

Feeling my emotions that crash like ocean waves.

Waves that turn into the most yellow of my anxiety and red of my anger and orange of my passion.

I am the brown of my skin.

My skin that connects me to the white of my Spaniard ancestors and black of my African ancestors, and red of my Taino ancestors.

Now don’t get me wrong, I see the grey in this world.

I am not so green to think that these colors can’t be just as scary as they are breathtaking.

I don’t want to know the deep purple of my depression or the dark grey of my loss.

But to just go blind to it all?

Wouldn’t my world dull?

I would lose the ability to revel in the details.

The details that make me, me.

So I’ll hold onto my color wheel with the hues, shades, tints, and tones that this world will throw at it.

Making sure that this life stays colorful.