i'm tired of reading between the lines.
i'm tired of digging through the dirt with my fingers,
trying to find something that isn't there.

you were never black or white,
and i used to like living in gray
but now it's the color on my walls
and the paint inside of my eyelids
and I'm getting sick of it.

we used to visit art galleries just after the sun sets
because we didn't want to miss the orange light spilling over the clouds and covering everything up.
it was a masterpiece that was always there but is never the same.
but maybe we liked its absence better -- you'll miss it more if it's always gone, right?

despite the paintings and art pieces we breathed in, there was never color in our story.
we were children's coloring books that never got touched, left to gather dust in an uninhabited nursery of broken dreams.
we were unpainted swing sets that no one bothered to start, let alone finish.
we were clay bars that no one wanted to mould.
we were meant for something more,
i told myself over and over again.

now, it's past the usual bed-time and i'm still digging.
this is why my nails are long, you've always wondered about that.
i'm digging our past back up,
i've tried burying them to fool myself there was never anything there.
i know I'm a fool for trying to get them back,
but these are the only places I could see a hint of color.

i'm tired of living in gray.
i'm tired of treating you like a work of art that needs to be figured out.
you're only with me after the sun sets.
where are you in the morning, except inside my head?
i'm starting to think this is not about absence making you miss me anymore.
i'm starting to think you only ever see me as an art gallery --
a place to visit, but never really stay.

are you happy?
it's the middle of the night and i'm screaming in pain --
my fingers hit something hard.
i'm bleeding red.
i look through the dirt, muddy with my tears, and found the thing my fingers scraped on.
hey, tree roots somehow look like veins.
but they don't drip color when you cut them open, right?
i found a bit of red in my nails, now.

i've been searching for a while, but always in the wrong places.
i think i know where to find color now.
i don't even need to dig.