title : a kaleidoscope of four colors
i pick up the kaleidoscope & the back of my fingers brush against some force i can’t understand [ enter cup ] / as i fumble with getting those phalanges around the plastic object // i raise it up to look through the tiny aperture // out of the darkness seeps the voice of Ed Sheeran / he’s singing : Wayfaring stranger / the lyrics settle around me — enveloping my mind & providing the backdrop as the first color comes into focus :
red
in my left hand is my anxiety — a knife sharpened by my own guilt / i trace the tip along the seams that hold my body mind together & watch as i fall apart — bleeding the color
that remains the same — even under the light unfolding from the moon as it shapeshifts into its crimson-colored twin /
/ in my country — a dancing naked man is a mad man.
/ in my mind — a dancing naked man is a lost fellow trying to navigate his own thoughts without a compass.
/ behind my closed door — a dancing naked man is just my reflection keeping up with my body that moves without being influenced by ògógóró [ alcohol ] or the red stuff.
blue
i still see her faces in all the places touched by light / her voice still seeps through the air from all the places untouched by light // if i had known that the blue of the sea would
swallow her up — i would have followed her into that color just so i wouldn’t have had to identify the lifeless body that was spat out days later // maybe the color of the sea is
the same as the sky because nothing else reminds a drowning person of the vastness of the life they’ve lived more than the sky itself / & so the eye looks & looks
until it sees no more / i remember your right eyelid had been eaten away & when i held your body in my arms — you were immortalized in my memory as the one that winked
at the sky as if to say : i lived enough — before you took me lord / wink.
yellow
his eyes are light brown only when the sun shines on it at exactly 47° / his eyes are dead when you look at them they look at you / they say an eye is only an eye because it sees
you / i say the movement of the sun isn’t stopped by dark clouds / what i really mean is : time doesn’t stop when i am balled up in happiness as my mother calls me by the pet
name that carries more weight than the name that was branded onto my being at birth / little sun — your eyes are so beautiful — except when they’re not /
& sometimes — i am only a boi with dead eyes dancing in the rain
/ sometimes — i am only a boi with light brown eyes squinting against the sun.
black
my knuckles bled from trying to knock on my grandfather’s coffin loud enough to wake him up / death gives you another name — & maybe that’s why the dead never answer
when you call them / my voice grew hoarse from counting one till ten over & over again — wishing that he would materialize out of the darkness — all flesh & bones — & arms
outstretched to scoop me up / you naughty boy playing hide & seek — you found me again ! / here i am — writing all these words just to keep you alive /
here i am — shutting my eyes tight enough to see my grandfather again.
here i am — shutting my eyes tight & seeing nothing but black.