Green on White

Love. For me, it was green on white. The tiniest tips of lush leaves, peeking through snow. Growing despite the cold. Always reaching for the sky.

I still remember how you looked, walking down Wisteria Lane, your white shirt and how it felt like freedom, finally away from her.

I washed the forest-coloured speckles from the creases of my palms, put away my gardening utensils.

My therapist said I wasn’t colour-blind. I told her she looked good wearing green, a vision of verdant in front of the window’s white backdrop.

The blizzard’s night sky was azure when I found you in my yard, the moonlight glowing golden all around you. You’d found the most vibrant part of my garden, the corner where the ground was dug up, pastel soil clumps of decorations.

I asked if you thought it was beautiful, my garden. There was a light in your eyes I’d once told myself was admiration. But maybe it was time, I named it what it was. Horror. Your face paled like the snowflakes that fell like bodies all around us.

You looked beautiful, even then, when I realised your white clothes were really the black of mourning. But I thought of how I’d never gotten to walk beside you along Wisteria Lane, only behind you.

If I could not hold you, only my garden’s soil should.

When the hole in your stomach seeped sticky liquid, I knew it was crimson in the snow. But I only saw green on white.