Colour

“We colour the world.

We are shades between the lines,

Lines which we have drawn.”

The challenge was for a poem, 100-200 words. A poem to evoke and challenge, open eyes, paint a new picture of the world for others to see.

We are the colours of the world, and it is beautiful. But the colour of people - it should be such a small thing, a non-thing, a thing that should not matter. And it is also such a huge thing, a powerful thing, everything for so many.

When we view the colour of people as something big - something that makes us overlook them, think of them differently, treat them as small - then we are taking that “small” thing about them, that thing that should not matter, and we are making it everything. That is wrong.

We should love peoples’ skin, love their colour, love what it means and the story it tells of their family and their history - it is one thing, one small thing, yet it tells so much for about all of us. That is good.

Colour is made big when it shouldn’t be, and kept small when it mustn’t be, and it is us who are doing that, when we should be using it to paint the world in a beautiful way.

So, I haven’t written 100 hundreds. I’ve written 15 words. 17 syllables. A small thing about a big thing. The whole thing about one thing.