Salt

I am white salt. I am bleached bone. The bite on your tongue, the ribs protecting your hearts home.

Some days I am the fiery crimson Phoenix, exalted from the ash. Or maybe

I am BRASH lime. Make your lips pucker, in the summer sun, barefoot, leaving the lemonade stand line.

Some days, I’m the pebble grey cement. You can walk atop me now, but when I was a kid, you could write your name in my skin with your fingertip and there it would stay, permanent.

There are days I wish to be beige, to d i s i n t i g r a t e — blending into the sand, grain by grain. Never to be seen again.

On the morrow I could be flaxen yellow, joyous as the sun’s rays, boundless energy, powerful praise.

Some days I am familiar, verdant green. I am Gaia’s skin, my blood flows as her dancing rivers, my breath— the wind in the trees.

Then again, on a dime, I can melt into mahogany wine. Seductive and heartbreakingly divine.

Or perhaps I am pale blush, the color that warms your cheeks as I brush your skin with my lips, whispering secrets.

Some days I’m as serious as sepia— archaic ancestral wisdom, a traveler of time.

Or translucent and pacified as the tears that have dried on the shirt of a child.

I am the unruly cerulean sea, I am white salt, I am formidable, I am fearless,

I am free.