My home was a palette

My Home was a palette

I grew saturated in the hues

Each room a different colour

The carpet throughout was cobalt blue.

There wasn’t a colour you couldn’t find

A colour for every feeling, sensation

Every thought in your mind.

I hate those white modern houses-

Don’t they make you feel a bit cold?

Don’t they feel a little hollow?

Or like a body that’s just bones?

I was raised inside a rainbow

It showed me how to connect.

Taught me love

Taught me safety

How to navigate my head.

If you put a colour to a feeling

then build that colour into a wall

Soon what you’re feeling offers security-

Your vulnerability is strong and tall.

My home was a palette

I grew saturated in the hues.

Yellow is calming

Like Mum‘s bedroom and the sand.

Crimson is passion-

Spilt wine-

First period stains-

When you make fists with your hands.

Green inside my closet

Taped up posters of girls

A colour of secret shame

Inside my secret gay world.

When the posters came down

So did little bits of green paint,

The bone white exposed

Feeling cold feelings of hate

Oil paint dipped dog tails

Left strokes of colour through the house

Memories of staying home from school sick

Watching mum paint from the couch.

She’d mix paints on toast plates and pop them back in the drawer

Eating breakfast and wondering if I see the same colours she saw.

Colour clashed bed linen

Orange bathroom tiles,

Goodnight kisses on foreheads

And toothpaste foaming through smiles.

Being carried from the car

One eye open all the way,

A blurry pixelated kaleidoscope

Of Grandma’s paintings in the hallway

I notice colours now

Everywhere that I go,

No matter where I am

The colours take me back to home.

My home was a palette

I grew saturated in the hues.