Teaching Synaesthesia

The conversation started with a pinecone-scented throat,

a joke about her Louis Armstrong tone.

I tell her she is wrong, try to explain

her voice is green with chlorophyll while Louis’ holds a note

of blood orange.

I should have known

that this would breed confusion, purple-pink

like buddleia surrounded by a hundred pairs of wings;

she cannot hear me for the fluttering.

I find a video of him online

and give instructions, as if tasting wine,

to let his voice just linger on the tongue—

absorb the sharp and citric acid sting

then wait

for the flood of sweetness,

and in the background, lingering,

the ever bitter lick of pith and pip.

She tells me that she can’t perceive

any colour in the voice.

“It doesn’t look orange,” I try again,

explain if anything it’s brown like corten steel,

or at least looks like the way that I think corten steel feels;

rough from the rust but warmer for the roughening.

I take it back a step, ask if she’s ever felt

the salt and pepper sharpness in the stinging nettle’s welt.