monochrome

she saw the world in monochrome. blacks, greys, and whites. she didn’t know there were colors. but one day she met him. and he showed her color.

he’d hold her hand and point to an apple. “look, that’s red.”

red, she’d say. and she’d smile, pointing to her battered cherry shoes.

“red.”

yes, he’d say. “red.”

the sky was blue. bananas were yellow. the grass was green. traffic cones were orange. pansies were purple.

and he taught her other colors.

crimson, neon orange, canary yellow, emerald, sapphire, lilac. then scarlet, vermillion, soft buttercup, pear green, manganese blue, lavender.

he told her that there were infinite colors.

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“what’s your favorite color,” he asked her, as they strolled in the park, him naming the color of each flower.

“white.”

“that’s not a color,” he said.

“yes. it is. it is all the colors.” she smiled.

he let her walk ahead of him, watching her laugh at the butterflies and sniff the flowers. her once dark grey hair was now warm chestnut, red woven into brown, hues of sunrise melted into chocolate. she turned around, and he walked towards her until they were an inch apart. he looked into her eyes which had appeared to be a solid brown at first, but were really spirals of earthy brown stained with hot chocolate on a cold winter night. honey droplets splattered the brown, and her irises were rimmed with candy apple green. the deep pools of dark-cinnamon imprisoned the sweetness of saccharine chocolate and the bitterness of strong coffee.

he kissed her. and he was filled with white: all the colors, at full brightness.

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they lay down on the dewy grass field, staring up at the sky that was no longer, to her, a light grey that deepened into black, but a baby blue dotted with cotton candy clouds. until dusk’s rosy fingers reached into the sky, painting a monet of muted tangerines and dusty pinks and crimsons, the endless edges a purple grey that seeped into the painting.

and then night fell, which she liked to envision as a large dark cape draped over the sky, inky velvet studded with bejeweled stars. he told her that he liked to think of the night as sugar spilt over black marble. that in the senerade of black, the stars were a choir singing in infinite patterns. the darker the night the sweeter the song.

he held her close, counting the stars, counting the colors.

she told him that the sky held the world, and he whispered to her, “no, the colors do.”