The Blues

Have you ever seen the colour of your world change?

I once, like you,

fancied the colour blue.

I wore it in my hair,

I heard it through my ears,

I sang it with my lungs,

I knew no other hue.

Mirrors, food, friends,

prayers, baths, knives

- all shades of abrasive unease.

Day after night,

the air a promising clarity.

Night after day,

Blue caught up with me.

“Darling, don’t worry,”

said corner-shop Tracey.

A pint of I-scream slapped the counter for the fifth time that week.

“you’ve just got yourself a case of them old time blues,

we’ve all got ‘em, don’t worry, sweet face.

I’ve got these lil’ magic pills my doctor gave,

they make me feel fuzzy, they do,

but they’ll numb that blue right out of you.’’

Cyan and beige rattle in the cage she shows me.

I think of the bonobo

I saw on the news,

glooming at the fence,

the motionless blues.

In the wild,

blue only lies

in the expansiveness of sky.

Is that why

they call it the blues?

So that we’d reach for a little more sky?

I thought:

If I feel something else than comfort,

something must be wrong with me.

Truth is:

I don’t think we were made

to rattle in a cage.

To find comfort

with this day and age.

Two-hundred-sixty-four

million pairs of eyes

see the world

in shades of blue.

Two-hundred-sixty-four.

I did too.

Depression is a signal,

of an over-sedated problem.

Not with me

but with the pallet

I have been given.

The colours through which

I was told to see.

Nights after days

I close my eyes.

I go within,

saturating.

Day after nights,

Finding the truth, “See”,

I tell Tracey :

“I am a rainbow,”

I whisper,

“too blue

for prime-time.”

“A prism,”

I state,

“too vast

for enclosure.”

“A colour

I vouch,

“too singular

for naming.

And so are you.”

We are vivid beings

trying to stay within the lines

of a colouring book

we did not choose,

using a felt pen

we have not felt,

a shade

we did not create.

Let us bleach our understanding.

of what we believe we must be.

We can choose our own blueprint.

Infuse it with our vibrancy.

Rising,

a colourful unity.