How many colours in a rainbow?

Ash,

Chalky grey tinged chest hair,

My dad teaching me about football and iron hypothesis.

In a plume of smoke, a locomotive of thought,

History behind his eyes that I regret not asking more about,

I hope things can be passed down genetically, memories,

Stored in the bank of my genes.

Magenta, with a soft G,

The colour of the satin top my mum puts on for work,

In a flurry of colour she turns the light on 3 hours before I was meant to wake up,

‘Close your eyes, I’m the light on’

Estee lauder heavy in the air,

Magenta on her olive skin,

Tinted by the sun years before I came in,

The colour was made for her,

It even has her name in its name,

Marygen.

Red,

The words that leave my friend’s lips and fill my cheeks as they tell a joke,

Breathless we loiter in the back of a food court,

Hours and hours go by just filled with hot takes, laughs and a snort,

I feel time tick by, a glimpse of the future or is it the past?

“Slipping through my fingers all the time,

I try to capture every minute.”

Our eyes red and our voices raw as they crack through the next morning,

Karaoke night well spent, even if just a snippet.

Green rules my life,

It crept its way in, vines of colour seeping into my day to day.

The complexity of blue and yellow fluttering through nature,

Green has grown with me, despite what my dead houseplants say,

A bottle of sprite and a scratchie on a Sunday,

A plate of broccoli I grew to love,

I decorate my home in green,

A gentle reminder of the days gone and days coming,

That have yet to be seen.

For I am a rainbow of the colours, people around me

I am a palette that stems deeper than a blue, a green, red, a periwinkle dream,

Those colours, the ones that build my rainbow,

As each day, month, year passes I gain new colours,

They are vibrant and dull, a collection of moments I want to sow,

Memories. Feelings, good, bad, jigsaw pieces of a person trying to make myself whole.