re·​frac·​tion

Red as my lipstick on the days I wear it as armour,

Both shielding myself and making myself visible.

I am at the front of the vanguard,

 Battle lines drawn around my insecurities. 

Orange as the flames that turned my childhood home to ash,

And taught me the meaning of impermanence. 

Yellow the shade of dawn,  bright around the edges,

Both soft and aching, renewed and rebuilding myself

Into the person my eight-year-old self looked up to.

Green as the forests of my youth,

Each leaf a testament to a world outside myself. 

Blue, not like the sky, 

But like the eyes of the first girl I loved. 

Bright, and shining but with storm clouds at the edges.

Indigo, like the sky at twilight, full of promise.

The shade that whispers,  

If you wanted to you could just keep driving,

Past the road you grew up on,  and the people you've been. 

Violet, a deeper shade of the bowl left by the kitchen sink, 

A sign of life and a promise.