Muted

A cloud is not white.

It is blue, yellow, purple,

Sometimes pinkish

You just have to look at it long enough

To see more than it first lets you.

I’ve been 2D for too long;

Looking for the steadiness of milk’s hues

Instead of the licks of technicolour

That stroke my translucency

Muted, that’s what I am.

I’m looking at the sky now

Adjusting my insecure, judgemental fix

Trying to be The Photographer,

The Artist, The Painter

The One Who Gets It

(And dreaming of observers seeing me

As The Model)

But again, I’m trying to be colours I'm not.

Navy lace proudly ballets my wrists,

It twirls through the keloids of my thighs,

And I hate it.

The wheaten stage has footprints;

Tiny slides where crimson bloomed into rose

With the thorns of my shame

Tucking into my greenness,

And reminding me of my enmity, constantly.

I’ve illustrated my skin with black ink

Scarring stories into myself,

Terrified to only be a cloud at first glance

I’ve caked my cheeks with vizards

Shaded and outlined my sea-all eyes,

Buttered my mouth, trying to silence it

I’ve hidden myself in disguises forever

Searching for shades as harlequin

But I see now, only in nakedness

Will I strip open my prismatic strikingness

My body is not ugly.

It is psychedelic.

It is strange and it is vivid.

It is beautiful.

It is blue, yellow, purple,

Sometimes pinkish

You just have to look at it long enough

To see more than it first lets you.

Muted, that’s what I was.