The Brown Mythos

Brown is not real.

It is one of the first lies we are told.

Earth tone crayons, wet-soil palettes.

We’ve always been coddled by deception.

Brown is an orange that spent too long feeling down.

It is a red-yellow that’s going through an edgy phase.

A light can shine red, orange, yellow, green, and that all-encompassing white.

But it cannot shine brown.

How, then, can I explain myself?

My brown hair, my brown eyes, my brown skin that burrows into the ground, feeling for brown bones, brown roots, and brown dirt.

Am I one more figment? A fragment meant to make sense of a pigment?

Imaginary not primary.

A concept that finds shape on a made-up moniker.

But the sun shines down on my brown face.

It can see me. I can too.

Brown exists because of light and dark.

It exists because we have said it must.