Hue (You)

by Maribel Garcia

artists brushes and oil paints on wooden palette. Vintage stylized photo of paintbrushes closeup and artist palette. palette with paintbrush and palette-knife

So long ago, I barely remember now, you asked me how I would describe color to someone who couldn’t see it. 

“Someone who’s blind?” I asked.

We were sitting on the floor, our backs pressed to the sofa frame. It was late. We had school in the morning. We didn’t even care. You had put on some old television show, completely drained off all color. There were black and white gradients on the screen, I could barely keep my eyes open. 

“No, just someone who couldn’t see color. Like, the show.” You had specified.

I opened my mouth and closed it.

I didn’t have an answer for you before.

I think I do now.

Green: The color of beginning. It’s the smell of fresh cut grass and the feeling of tree sap sticking between your fingers. It’s walking into your yard and hearing birds chirp their greeting and it’s sweat slicking your back like a waterfall. It’s a yawn bursting out of you and smiling so hard your cheeks hurt.

Green is the first day of spring; the day I met you. 

It was your dress billowing out from the wind, it was your bare feet covered in leaves, it was flower buds tucked into your hair, and it was that nauseating twist in my gut I had never felt before.

It was the color of your notebook, the color of your mechanical pencil, the color of the rim of your glasses. You pushed them closer to your face as you tore out a page. I watch you scribble out your phone number and smile. 

You were like a breath of fresh air and I had never felt so ill. 

That was the beginning.

That was green.

Blue: This is what it feels to hold a secret close to your chest. Shielded by layers inside of you like a loose sock tangled in your bedsheets. It’s cold, and it’s heavy, and it’s blue. Girls like us carry secrets like we carry chapstick in our purses. 

It’s curiosity. It’s thrill. It’s guilt and the pursuit of the chase. It’s sneaking out to meet you by the beach for the first time. It’s the sound of the crashing of waves against the shore. It’s the chill in the air and the shiver that runs down my spine. It’s the goosebumps that trail down my arm from the cold.

Or perhaps the goosebumps were from you, instead.

Blue is the color of nights like these.

The sweater I lent you. The blueberries you brought to fend off our hunger. The salt in the air and the moonshine on your face. My lips and your veins. You took my hands and brought them to your mouth and used your breath to warm them up. 

Blue was the twist in my stomach, like the water beyond us, and the sinking in my gut, like the Titanic going, down, down, down. Blue was the tears pricking my eyes and pulling my hands away to shove them in my pocket. It was the spike of fear that felt like the skip of a heartbeat instead. 

It was so cold, and I was so blue. 

Purple: The color of our mystery. Where do we go now? What are we? When will I grow out of this feeling? Can I grow out of this feeling? Questions and questions and questions, all without answers. 

 It’s the color of the ribbon in my pocket bible and the color of our priest’s stole. The color of royalty and nobility. When we pray, you hold my hand under the pew. That was purple.

It’s the shame I feel when I get home. It’s the urgent feeling of flipping through the pages and landing on Leviticus 18:22. I whisper the proverbs until I fall asleep. I think maybe, when I wake up in the morning, I won’t feel my legs grow weak when I catch your eyes.

I dream of your bedroom. The smell of your lavender candles and your blankets of such a deep shade of plum. It’s me, pressing my lips thin and closing my eyes tightly. It’s you, taking my hands out of my pocket and bringing them to your neck. I felt your pulse against my fingertips. 

This is blasphemous, I said in my daze.

The opposite, you corrected, this is sacred.

I woke up and it was purple.

Intermission:

Pink and brown. Brown and pink.

I asked you what your favorite color was. You said pink.

You asked mine. I said brown.

Why?

You said it was the color of bubblegum and ribbon bows. The color of hearts and femininity. You said you had grown up resentful of pink because it was girly, and though you were a girl, it felt like such a derogatory thing. You weren’t awarded the option. You wanted to love something not because it was expected of you, but because you couldn’t not love it. 

I said it was the color of coffee stains and leather-bound notebooks. The color of dirt and acorns, the color of baked goods and cozy jackets. I liked it because it was simple, it was familiar, I could find brown anywhere.

What you didn’t say was that pink was the color of the blush on my cheeks. The color of my gloss and my lips. The color of blossoming romance.

What I didn’t say was that brown was the color of your dark curls, your skin, and your eyes. God, your eyes. I looked for them everywhere, and I always managed to find them.

No, neither of us said those things. Yet we heard them anyway. 

Pink and brown. Brown and pink.

Red: The blaring lights at the party. The blood streaming down my nose. The plastic cup in your hand. The chipped polish on my nails. His leather jacket on your shoulders. The matching lipstick that stains our teeth. 

It was the music so loud in our ears I felt my whole body shaking. It was you screaming at me, and me screaming at you, and us screaming at each other until our voices were so hoarse it hurt to breathe. It was the metallic taste on my tongue. It was the heat in my cheeks. It was so hot, so hot, I had to get out. 

When I turned to leave, you grabbed me by the wrist and shoved me against the wall. 

It was the split second I thought you were going to hurt me.

It was the split second I knew you never could. 

It was lips meeting in the middle and your breath on my cheek. It was my hands on the side of your neck and your hands on my hips. It was the smear of our make-up. Fingers in hair. Skin on skin. Girls like us, I had thought, carried secrets like chapstick. 

Your touch made me feel invincible. If you told me this was the only right thing in the world, I would have believed you. If you told me we were going to live forever, I would have believed you. If you told me you loved me, I think it would’ve broken me, because I’d believe you. 

But you didn’t tell me anything except that I looked beautiful and that we could never say a word of this to anybody else. I swallowed your words and dragged you back into me.

It was red, it was red, it was red.

Orange: Early mornings. Walking you to school at sunrise and walking you home at sunset. It was skipping class and meeting you in the girl’s bathroom, locking the stall door and kissing you in the dim lighting. It was sharing wood pencils and smiles. It was my jersey number painted onto your cheek as you cheered at my sports games.

It was all those months we spent together. The warmth of your arms around me. The way you shook with vibrant laughter when I told you stupid jokes. Carving pumpkins and making pies. The flames in the fireplace we huddled around during the winter. The gloves you gave me for Christmas. Now you don’t have an excuse to hide your hands in your pockets. The note was written in an orange pen that smelled like tangerines. 

It was counting down the seconds as the year ended.

I wanted to kiss you at midnight. 

You said we couldn’t.

I knew that.

You knew, I knew that.

But we snuck off and found a way to do it anyway. 

I felt you smile against my lips.

The fireworks made the sky orange. 

Yellow: You were yellow. You were the sun, I was the planet revolving around you. You were the flicker of the flame, I was the wax melting in your presence. You were bright and blinding and burning me from the inside and out. I would let you. I would always let you.

You had a smile that rivaled gold and a voice like honey. You stood tall like a sunflower and always smelled like citrus. 

Sometimes I would have to look away from you. I can’t always take it.

Some days you felt like a walking hazard sign. A warning, a caution. Stay away, stay away. This will cause you pain.

I was Icarus and you were the sun. I was the moth and you were the flame.

We both knew it would end this way, didn’t we? Or maybe it was just me. Maybe it was all just me. 

You were the sunshine in the morning haze and I was a coward.

You were always the brave one, between the two of us.

Yellow, yellow, yellow.

Gray: Brewing snow storms. Heavy rain pounding on the roof. Fog obscuring the road. Icy. Dangerous. It was gray at the hour you called me. My eyes blurred with sleep, I was barely awake. It was your sobs through the phone, it was you pulling up to my driveway.

You had your bags packed. You told me they knew. 

I tried not to believe you, but you never lied to me. 

My vision clouded and muddled. I couldn’t think straight. You told me you never loved anything like you loved me, not even yourself. You told me it didn’t matter where we went, we could never stop driving if that’s what I wanted, as long as we were together. You told me to leave with you now before they had the chance to tear us away from each other.

You held my hands tightly, because that was your thing.

The gloves you gave me were on my nightstand. 

I pulled away, because that’s what I always did. 

You left without me. You kept looking back, but I didn’t move. 

Your car had already swerved and flipped over by the time I changed my mind. 

You couldn’t see the turn. It was too gray.

Black: The car that took you away. Empty. Bleak. Pointless.

White: Vacant. Your spot next to me was vacant. A page without words, my pencil hovers over with things I never brought myself to say. You, I decided, were not a thing to be spoken of in the past tense, and yet. Your name belonged on my lips, not on a stone. 

So long ago, I barely remember now, someone asked me how I would describe color to someone who couldn’t see it. 

I didn’t have an answer for them before.

Now, it’s you.