Palette

What’s your favourite colour?

My teacher asked me as a child.

I didn’t have an answer,

My art was smeared and wild.

I padded in my father’s suit,

Stole jewellery from my mum

I bought figurines to play Space Marines,

And did my nails to match their guns.

What’s your favourite colour?

My doctor asked me in my teens.

You say you are a girl inside,

Yet I see you’re wearing jeans.

Purple is not a helpful hue,

Tick the box, pink or blue?

Pronouns caught me unawares when

I made my queer debut

They or he or ze/zem/she

All ways of saying you.

On neon streets I heard the jeers,

from boys just out of view.

Is that a man or ugly chick?

Mate, I don’t have a clue

My anger flashes crimson, despair paints the world in grey.

I drape myself in olive green when I want to fade away.

I raise my silver shield to fight for what is right,

I lie in fuchsia sheets and wait for my white knight.

My memories are blown about like grains of yellow sand.

I scour my sepia past to see moments I have spanned.

I love that shade on you, breathed boys

In club-lights bathed in blue.

My house has many doors, and I’ve coloured each in loving shades

Green ties and golden gowns, orange tiger stripe PJs

In bleak rentals I dream of splashing myself across the walls,

Breaking free of white and black.

Red blood, green bile and yellow fats

A Pollockian frenzy of Jack.

I discard my painted faces like snake-skins left in dust

I will not tattoo my skin or nail my colours to the mast

Shifting like a chameleon, I am comfortable at last.

You only get one chance at being you.

Why waste it in one hue?