Colouring Outside the Lines

I came in red and hot,

Tiny and spluttering,

Early, 'You're far too early to be in this room right now.'

28 weeks and flooding cars,

elevators and hospital corridors

with Clear Blue panic

and wonder.

Desperate to start living.

Dancing before walking,

never stopped talking,

But I made it.

We made it, you and I,

and I guess I've been full speed ahead ever since.

Forwards.

And sometimes a little bit back.

Red passion

became social action.

Believing that love is love

and that we all need a little

Activism.

Spending time rubbing away at the grubby paint brush

that tarnished feminism.

Munching through your 'authentic cuisine',

plastics later discarded into the seas.

Trying to unpick the stitches of institutionalised hatred,

of races, or places, or 'othered' faces,

Pushing for us all to be equal,

which seems ludicrous when we were all born that way.

My anger is seething amber.

Forged over decades of fiery pit-falls,

built up expectations,

burnt out, then left to cool in the smoked-out silence.

Our tools and weapons:

quick wit and sharp tongues

abandoned in the embers of argumentative aftermaths.

I have to have the last word.

And I'm damned good at it.

I can make jewellery out of that heat.

Gauging out gems with speckled imperfections to wear proudly against the scars we earned to get here.

I'm almost proud of the verbal hits you just had to take.

Darkly proud; the colour and potency of deep red wine.

The bemused warning that flickers behind the eyes both goading and threatening

'you. won't. win. this.'

You taught me that.

But someone else taught me grace.

Humility, and with it,

a sobering pride:

the kind you can only soak up with porous outstretched hands when you've achieved something, built something,

created something that might have some positive impact,

some small, sparkled collision where you pop and fizz,

unknowingly bursting into someone else's world.

And they let you in.

Without thought or concern.

Chemicals whirr and jolt,

thousands of tiny fireworks pepper the sky, all purple and shimmering gold,

and you've helped.

You've made a difference, to someone, somewhere, somehow in that moment.

And they smile.

And I can hear the smile in her voice.

She's supported my various shades,

Some days she washed and handed me the brushes

when I felt little lost,

catching the misfired paint drops

falling, flinging, spilling off the pallet,

when things didn't quite go to plan.

Saving them in a little glass cup:

all my mistakes, lessons and expressions learned,

then

gently

giving them back to me, when it was time for me to hold my own

and, after a time,

She started catching rainbows

When, at 26, I discovered my love for two genders.

This girl looks like summer and feels like home.

Love.

Brilliant white lights and powdered snow;

Because you and I were forged in winter

Sugared streets, falling into eat-eries

stealing kisses between combat classes

Readied for early goodbyes that weren't to be.

And here we still are,

Forging castles under the stars,

You and me.

Friendships are pops of magenta swirled with sprawling sunshine.

Laughter pours across the floor from knocked over paint pots;

Seeping between the cracks in the floorboards,

staining colour-wheel carpets with tears and stories.

Nuanced shades form intricate memories

that splatter and spill onto the fabric of what makes us 'us'.

Stretching out on the rug, breathing the colours in.

That fresh paint smell.

Our oxygen.

Creativity shimmers in pinks.

Reading scripts they stream over the letters,

words carried off the pages in swirling dusk-pink winds,

giggling, darting across the stage .

As scene stealing orbs share our energies on screen,

forming the outlines of our bodies,

emitting a rose gold hue,

and when our eyes lock,

Lightly pairing

with an inner electrical hum.

Work is green.

The colour of promise, of nature, restart, renew.

Navigating our way through countless shades

of green-grey areas,

forests of challenges stretch out beyond the horizon

of zoom calls and 1-2-1's and themed evenings.

Tangled up in tightening vines,

you're shouting out that you can do this alone,

But I know there are some trees you just don't want to chop down yet.

An invisible beast has arisen from story books of old,

and you're all just trying to get out of the woods and back to Grandma's house

unscathed.

Stiff upper lip and sanitiser-ed hands.

I'm here if you want me to be,

And sometimes relieved smiles take shape on lips,

as your adventures prepare to be told.

And I wonder about my own adventures.

of today

from before,

dreams to be.

I think

I recognise ‘me’ now.

Ugly grey works in progress,

Swirl in fiery golds and positivity.

An explosion of colour collected in pockets,

Swept up from a scavenger hunt across years.

But with so many more to find.

Wherever I'll be,

I'll be colouring outside the lines.