Voiding Color

It’s time to scrape my palette clean

I won’t be painting rainbows again.

I’m going back to black and white

and subtle shades of grey.

I will dip my brush in turpentine

until all trace of color is gone.

My skill at painting beauty

is better left to lines on a page.

Black and white for clarity

on a grey canvas is all I need.

Color just confuses me

and makes the words harder to see.

I don’t understand the colors

they are too much for me to take.

I prefer the simple light and dark

the unblurred wrong and right.

This room has been filled with red for days

a raw and bleeding heart.

An anger and a frustration

the will never be expressed.

It was blue for a time and I mistook

the cool for comfort and safe.

It is actually cold and hard

like water when it freezes.

The yellow I saw as the warmth of the sun

is now just emotionless and stale.

It’s unpleasant and uncomfortable

like a dusty desert day.

Green was by far the worst of all

I was dazzled by its shine.

The twinkle, the shimmer, the mystical eye

but it has another side.

Jealousy and envy come in green as well

shade and tone often blend.

Making it hard to truly see

what color any of it is.

I prefer my shadows, my ghosts, my whispers

although they haunt me as they always have.

At least I know them all by name

and know exactly what to expect.

Adventure is not all it’s cracked up to be

nothing ventured, nothing gained, I know.

But also no more loss to bear

confusion made to feel.

All of my patterns come in the colors

that I have left here on this floor.

The soft curving lines that lead me astray

I will never understand.