Pink

It was the color I begged my parents to paint the walls of my childhood room. My wish was granted when I was five- I felt like a true princess (though the feeling never lasted long).

Then I came out. And blue and white became my colors. They stood for bravery and intelligence. Teacups and politics and getting rejected by both sides. Binders, both for school and for myself, all of it had to be blue.

Blue didn't mean sadness at the time. It was sharing coffee in blue mugs I bought on impulse at a thrift store. You were always bad about encouraging me to spend money. Old books with their pages stained with blue tea, the kind that turned pink with lemon juice. (The kind she only ever made for me.)

Her. Hair and lips and hearts. The skirt of her favorite Disney princess- or was it the sleeves? Tiny waist. Stubbornness. Determination. Pills to help her function. An aversion to Valentine’s day. The flowers that pulled through city concrete in May. Swallowing Pepto Bismol tablets during our first sleepover and going right back to whatever we were doing. Strawberry milk tea with mango boba pearls. Watermelon jolly ranchers. A blanket I didn’t like but kept around anyway. Student ID’s for a school she didn’t even go to, still the red and the white brought her to mind. It was a last-minute birthday present (though, was it really something she picked for me?)

Her hair was still bubblegum at the ends when we went to prom together. From softball to fires to deaths to vacations to almost-breakups to makeups to stormy nights to friendly fights to the way we cleaned out your dad’s car one weekend, the pink stayed, though it faded. Months and months after we were just too late. Hiding the pain of growing up and growing apart (You would hide it by making a joke about me.)

Then one day I looked up. I saw there was pink everywhere in my life, in the places there should have been blue. In trying to keep what we had, I lost myself in you.