The Eternal Crayon Question

My ex-psychologist asked me once, ‘if you were a crayon, what colour would you be?’ She was less than impressed when I said blood red with glitter. But what’s life without a little sparkle, right?

Life starts in red, and depending who you annoy, there’s always a chance it’ll end that way, too. Red lives with me more often than black; red like I’ve closed my eyes and raised my face to the sun in prayer even when there’s no such thing as sunlight on a day like this.

My ex-psychologist said red is the colour of fury, hatred, and malice, and I’ve always thought she was on the cartoon supervillainy side of the colour psychology spectrum. You gotta be careful naming colours for rages like that- it says more about you than it says about the world, the colour, or whatever idea you were trying to force into life.

Breathe.

Stop.

Give yourself permission to let your heart, not your pop culture references, tell you a story. Sometimes red is just a geranium gilded with spider webs. Sometimes it’s just a declaration of love on an overpriced card. Sometimes red is just life, love, and moving on, because sometimes red is a poem you never wanted to write.

It is a truth universally overlooked that poets and violent psychopaths both have hard-ons for anatomy and the destruction thereof. Both will tear your heart apart and call it artistry, both devote an uncomfortable amount of smug hours to naming all the shades of red that they’ve created. I wonder sometimes how many shades of red I’ve named writing heartbreak confessions into the world. Too many.

Still, when I think of you, I think of beige.

Hurt has always been beige to me. Not the bright slash of red, not the absence of light black brings, not even the sort of blue that’s ink gloomy and falling hard for darkness. Just an eternity of beige walls, windowless, devoid of life and warmth. Beige has always been the absence of creativity, and I would rather dance in the red of life than linger in the waiting room of your ego.

Breathe.

Stop.

Let go.

Walk away, back towards colour and life and everything good and fun and right with the world. Because sanguine is as hopeful as it is blood soaked, a glittery blood red crayon that catches the light and shines.

My ex-psychologist asked me once, if hope was a colour, what would it be?

She didn’t like my answer.