Alphabet Paint

I have long suspected synesthesia.

That’s when R-E-D becomes red-pink-grey

and S-O-U-L becomes orange-yellow-green-tan.

Under the alphabet is a blinking set of lights

and I chase them with a glass jar

and dirty worn-out eyes.

I dabbed colour on my face when I was six.

And the answers to myself hid in crimson

beneath my nails. Maybe the questions

sit waiting on the business end of an orange peel.

Maybe the puzzle piece darkens like black mould

on my white wallpaper, or

tricolour variations of rainbow flag.

Who gets to decide the paint-by-numbers

combination to my heart? Me?

I’m still working out the difference between

cerise and ruby. Someone told me

magenta isn’t a real colour. Not really,

they said, it doesn’t fit in. And I wonder if it

matches my irises on a bad day.

I know we all want to be mantis shrimp.

They see the world differently, they have

a different paintbox. Their watercolours hang

in the ocean's greatest museums, and they

have more options to choose from. I am pink,

I am red, I am brown, I am yellow, I am the blue of

a dark room on a bright day, I am

dipping my hands in black ink

and writing names on a blank page.

The letters look like me.