My Life In Color

color is my life

each shade of emotions

bleeding into the next

a radiant gradient

a glorious glow

from cherry to plum

my bones are rainbones

with color i’m fanatical

and overly grammatical

chromatic and fantastic

even my fashion is drastic

it’s more than red blood

in blue veins

or the grey matter

in my anxious brain

but i can breathe

in a colorful world

though often i feel like

i’m misunderstood

panic is orange, a warning

it’s horrid

i’m manic, erratic

breath’s not automatic

so i wear a mask

and that is a task

where i pretend to be real

like everyone else

who doesn’t know

how this feels

rainbows are my therapy

the order always there for me

from cherry to plum

like hued ladder rungs

reaching up to the sky

breath filling my lungs

the absence of thoughts

in my mind

like violence

relief from the grief

in a spectrum of silence

rainbows aren’t bows

they’re circles in fact

but earth’s own horizon

doesn’t show them intact

and rainbows don’t end

that’s really the riddle

wherever you are

you stand in the middle

plus you and me

we most likely have three

types of cones in our eyes

to see reds, blues and greens

they say bees can’t see red

but they see in UV

and with sixteen cones

what do mantis shrimp see?

rainbows mean pride

and i’m proud to be gay

as for mentally ill

it’s hard

but ok

i’m proud for persisting

i’m proud for existing

i’m proud of myself for

resisting the system

i’ve found brilliance

in my resilience

it’s the way i was born

my pride is a sweater

that’s comfortably worn

it’s frayed at the edges

but the colors hold fast

it’s shaped to my soul

and it’s knitted to last

i wear green to fight the stigma

of my brain’s enigma

i don’t know if i’m

an expert or not

but my colors are constant

and there’s always a lot

there’s no easy cure

mental illness is hard

but colors help me feel better

when the thoughts get too dark