Colored

Your heels will crush the verdant coastal grass,

grown tall in the mid-summer Florida heat

the blades will cut green your soles

A sandy-brown will pack under your nails, toenails from digging deep, 

from pushing the silty beaches

You will feel the rusted-red patches of heat on your skin from the caves in those cold-spring waters

Your cheeks will redden too, not warmed so by the fire you sit shoulder to shoulder, knee to knee,

joints pressed in a circle round with stranger-friends to warm yourselves on a cloudless night

Red like shame. From a phonecall,

shame of admission: devoid of hetero bent. Red like a different kind of fire

But your fingertips will be pink and tan, the skin of your first love

You will swipe it in the morning on a Tuesday,

Your face buried in neck, nose warm with the orange scent of skin

Orange like the glow of your hips, you will have danced them so bright

Danced in a circle 'round a black and silver hat, a miniature folklorico ballerina,

danced in the kitchen with your lover, 

danced alone in a whirl under the full moon with the brown cows sleeping on the other side of the fence,

falling down, crashing into bright-orange pain

Your back will dye taupe from pressing it against the zarape on the rooftop,

on all the rooftops before

Taupe from all of the walls you will lean against, 

Taupe like the shadows you'll hide in

Your calves, I think, will be wine-deep purple, skin of grapes

So taught from walking, walking, walking constantly 

Walking to school as a youth in the hot West-African sun,

walking to school in the cold wintry Bronx,

walking by street harassers, shouting sticky grey-green slurs as you pass on a spring Virginian day,

walking and never arriving at a destination, picking up colors as you go

The backs of your hands will be brown, not from the sun but from your tias, their hands a quick blur of skin, flour, tortilla

Brown like the underside of conchas, brown like worked leather

Your belly will be black, like wet earth 

Mine would be too if I wriggled like you did from the ground, so packed with moisture

We came into this world not knowing who we were, flinging ourselves about, and swatching, always swatching it all as we go

You'll look into a pool and, like some failed narcissus, see every pale-yellow page, 

every off-white, every black letter you have read

Did you think you could go through this life unscraped by the pink salt of effort and undusted by the grey soot of apathy?

look how they color my arms

Look, do you love it like I do? Are your thighs also blue with fatigue? Did you also climb the mountain and rest at the stream? How would you come through the briar unpainted? 

Meet me then, colored in embroidery, hair tied with red, and green, and ribbons of white,

Meet me here and there and see how we grow heavy with color,

You are only so colorful yet,