Rainbow Dreams

Shades of crimson flashed before my eyes.

More like cadmium red when she stopped long enough to talk.

An acid green taste in my mouth as the blizzard blue sky unsparingly transmitted the bitter dark slate gray truth.

Every syllable she uttered, every time she smiled, every magnified titanium gesture, sank me deeper into a misleading hazy eternal black hole of self-delusion.

Mercifully, the neon blue, deep sea green, psychedelic purple explosion of barely containable madness dissipated upon awakening each morning, as reality made it clear she did not dream about me in color.

To her, I was nothing more than a fleeting dull silver chalice.

She respected my army green character and sharp apple green whit but felt no vibrancy.

A chance meeting at a carnival, ended with her seductive cyan painted fingernails peeling off a bite-sized piece of bright lilac cotton candy, an irresistible bubble gum pink tongue licked her sweet ruby lips.

There is no greater imprisonment than the helplessness of unrequited passion.

A dark moss green swamp.

A pale, beige, tortuous nightmare, perpetuated by the mind’s obscene attempt to find a silver lining in an otherwise eternally evil night.

Her magenta heart swelled for a boy who wasn’t me.

It didn’t matter how tenderly the words flowed from my scarlet lips.

Or how her shiny shamrock eyes shimmered when I made her laugh.

There was nothing I could do.

She didn’t love me.

For the longest time, I thought vanilla ice ran through her veins.

But that was not fair.

And while I felt like someone had bleached my soul, my spirit survived.

On an unsuspecting spring afternoon, a girl with sandy brown hair and sapphire blue eyes asked if she could join me as I sat alone under a pale green sky, dotted with floating cotton and streaks of soft yellow light.

We talked and laughed and held hands and by the time the fiery rose sky faded into darkness my heart was ablaze.

And when she loved me, I no longer had to dream in color, my world was paved in gold.