neutrals

I.

I begin the day with white.

I empty my mind of everything except

a horizontal white rectangle.

it is okay to sit still! I tell the rectangle.

the rectangle wriggles.

it wants playmates

but I know better:

if I give it toys it will rip them to pieces.

I tell the rectangle that it is an adult,

that it likes neutral tones

and cool clay shower walls

and square salt shakers.

that’s what white is.

white is the color of nothing.

I end the day with black, hoping

that I will have amassed enough black facts

to pool together underneath my boat.

if I have enough solidarity

I will glide out of the starless harbor,

for black is depth

and black is candor.

if black tells a lie, it is labeled as a lie,

and I understand what I am getting into

should I choose to step on it.

black writes jazz.

it may be stair-stepping,

it may be soft and shattering,

but it is not deceiving.

II.

I am chided

for adhering to my blacks and whites,

but in order to step out of the sudoku

I must acknowledge that I might make a mistake.

I might be bad at something that

I can’t run away from.

I might be gray.

but gray is also the color of the rain

not consistent but constant,

a watershed for the clouds to let go, let go,

and keep letting go

until nothing is left.

it's a romantic color, gray.

an in-between,

a losing yourself,

a gentle reminder,

a forgiving type of precipice.

gray is a scared type of learning,

a questioning type of learning,

a yearning, vulnerable type of learning.

but gray is the color of my eyes in the moonlight:

it is the color of aching into pieces

for something you love or cannot love.

I don’t care what I have said

or what I have written before,

gray is not safe.

I know that I am running, I am running

from the color assigned to me

but I am too bruised by the concerns which

lay heavy on me like a paperweight

I am bad at something!

I am bad at something!

the gray fills my mouth with cotton apologies

until I bury my head in the black.

III.

I have asked gray to leave

because it would not fit inside my stomach

and in its place I fall in love with brown:

the color of my messiah’s hands and feet

brown is the color of comfort,

a learning without the romance

a boringness without the worms.

brown is the safest of books and of libraries

quiet and humble

growing and growing and growing

gray cuts me like the sharp blade of a knife

and brown is the dull edge I run my lips along

like I do when I am thinking.

I am thinking, I am thinking.

the gravel soaked sunlight delights me!

maybe I am not so difficult to love.

brown ties my shoes and steeps me tea

and I know that gray would too

but I am afraid to be alone with her--

with the me that makes mistakes.

in brown’s company I drink deep from the well.

everything is holy ground,

and the dirt underneath me is cause for worship.

I know, yes, I know

not everyone will believe this

but I understand now that it is a truth

inseparable from me, and that

those who will get along with me best

rejoice riotously with dirt and its worship.

brown is a learning all its own.

it helps me to make peace with

my failures, tells me firmly

that who I am

is twined between

the hands of an almighty god:

I am never lost.

I am asking, I am asking

have I run away from gray

because I was too scared?

but the dust on my savior’s sandals tells me

that gray and brown

can coexist

g.c.s