Tree of Every Color

I was born with a birthmark

light brown and smooth, on my right knee

It’s how I learned my right from left

Brown is the color of a tree

but every color is important to me:

black, white, neon colors,

pastels, grays

To me, colors can be

anything you want them to be:

Emotion, pain, love

they can represent

anything

you want them

to represent

When you are making art

you can use colors in different ways

subtle colors, bright colors, moonlight colors, night colors

You can splatter them on canvases

swirl them into a spiral

paint them in dots

No matter how you like to play

with colors, all of them

have the same root, like a tree

Every color comes from the roots of the same tree.

When I think of all colors, I think

of a big oak tree reaching

its roots over miles and miles, reaching

its arms across the entire world

Every person has colors inside and out of them.

Every kind of eyes, hair, and skin

are beautiful

Brown, black, white, tan

even a mix

of all of them: every skin color

is unique and beautiful

from every freckle to every mark

Colors are beautiful no matter

how light or dark

I was born with hazel eyes.

A few weeks after that,

My mom was all worried

about me and couldn’t sleep

She came to my crib and looked

at me

I wasn’t asleep. I looked at her

with my hazel eyes, full of light

brown bark and green leaves

I told her I would be okay

with my eyes

And I was.

All colors are like roots and branches of a tree

When I think of colors, I think of trees

When I think of colors, I think of me.