I’ve researched about rainbows last night and I guess everything I’ve read about them reminded me of you. Yes, I have been cloaking you under the word “rainbow” for some time now and maybe it is only right to tell you why.
Science tells us that rainbows come after the rain, a storm, a sudden burst of heaven’s emotions. It does not always follow it but when the sun touched what is left of the rain, it bends light and etches out a ray of seven colors that point out different things. As light passed through the water in my eyes, I saw you. Maybe you really are the rainbow, the one after every heartbreak there is in this insane world.
Red. This is the first, the light with the longest wavelength. Maybe this is where our kisses fit. The work of art we leave on each other’s skin. We have always loved how our lips looked like after every kiss – crimson red and bleeding with genuine love. As red as my shirt, as red as your blood, left on your lips after we got lost in the moment. Red also shouts passion. This is where our love for every piece of art resides. When we walk on museums, holding hands, and inhaling dried up paint on every possible canvas there is, I let my heart melt in your palms, knowing you would eventually turn me into dust and make me your best piece of art. Red also tells a lot about security. How one can feel the warmth as the color red blends with the 4 corners of a room. With you, I found heat, warmth, and safety in a body. I have never felt I can find home in someone’s hand. I have always seen finding a home in a person terrifying, scared of the impending possibility of destruction. Here, in your palms, I found the 4 corners people have been searching for their whole lives. I have found home in you.
Orange. In psychology they say this represents equilibrium and control. I’m putting every ounce of respect we have for each other here. It is like knowing when to start and when it has to breathe and pause. It knows how to put everything in place, like my shoulder to the sides of your face, my tongue on your mouth, your thighs around me. We have been through shortcuts and the longest way back to each other but it always spelled out as just right. You have always noticed how we complement each other, and yes, we do. It is like every god gambled to see us fit our pieces together effortlessly. See the edges of my soul fit yours in the most perfect way it crept out those who broke us and left us like this. They have forced themselves to try and come up with a good picture but you see, we always made a better one. It has gone from queer to insane to all kinds of crazy, but balances out well with our sanity and clear minds when all of our monsters are sound asleep.
Yellow. It represents the clarity of thought and wisdom. This is something I have to confess. Whenever you’re around, my mind halts and seems to get off track. Full of all the possibilities that are in store for us. Full of all your words that added up to good poetry that I can never come up with. Whenever my brain wanted to lash out on all the good things I have left, you are the most peaceful sleep I get. Whenever I wanted to give up sleep, you stayed up late with your eyes half-closed, telling me stories about the times you used to feel something in your chest when you see me. Whenever I had to tell everyone it’s okay when it’s not, you tell me all the right words to show them it’s okay to not be okay. Whenever I punch walls just to feel something, you take my hands and place them on yours, telling me you are hurting, too. All my days that I spent drowning in your love came with a safety net, but I never had to use it because you were always careful about the waves, knowing I couldn’t swim. People asked me to always fill the gaps in silences, but you, you let me have my quiet. I have always felt like I am walking under the rain, under a strong storm that everything that happens to me seemed to take me to dark places. You have been the sunlight in all of that. You are my clarity.
Green. This is the middle color of the rainbow. Sandwiched in all this chaos is growth, our growth. In the last months I have seen you cry and wipe your own tears using your sleeves. You have seen me break down a million times, on my knees and finally calling on a god we used to believe in when we were kids. We have been thrown out by chances we didn’t take, or took but turned out to be lessons. As we saw broken, as we saw lost and defeat, we found each other cradling the hope of another chance to grow. We fed on bankrupt promises but now we know better – that words do not equate to actions, that the sun does not always give warmth but can also mean rain, that knowing the future is as scary as walking back to the past, that our teenage angst always brought the rebel in us, that our desire to run away is rooted in inconsistency and feeling the opposite of contentment, that love is not always good the first time you taste it. We have travelled around, tasting wrong mouths and savouring on bad poetry from people we thought we knew but just had more ways of masking themselves. They try to cover up the claw marks left on our backs but we show them to tell the world the pain was all worth it. We were broken, yes, but one can always be whole again.
Blue. It is the color of the unknown, the sky, the wide oceans. As we go down this road I knew the sky would remind me of our always clouded but guided thoughts, and that oceans are meant to make us remember that salt water feeds our skin with the taste of life. It is the color that feeds on my obsession with knowing where everything will fall before I jumped. It is the color of distance. Of going the extra mile for you, knowing that it will always be appreciated. Of the 1911 miles of land and sea that will beg me to **** them just to touch you again. I have always feared going away, but having someone to go home to is just another story. It is the color of the sheets we slept in that night we confessed our love for each other. It is the color of all the blood running in my veins so fast when you call out my name. Stick a needle in my skin, a hum of your voice screaming “Stay” will flood your ears. It is the color of the future, of the out there we can never be sure of. The future is something my hands can never grasp, never breathe in, it is like swimming in open waters. I have always been smothered with choices. I will always choose you. I can only wish that you stop searching for a new sky to look at. I want to write a new sky for you, a new ocean.
Indigo. It is said that this color is sedating. Picture serene. I have seen this in your smiles when we talk about the things that make your insides curl into ***** of unknown feelings. I forgot rage. I forgot empty. I forgot sins. It is the tranquillity I only found in your arms. My appetite for your arms around me eat me up at night, craving for your every breathe, yes. We made a shrine for all our mistakes, laugh at our misleading thoughts. Picture calm. It is waking up to the nest that is your hair, stained with all our tears from last night’s confessions. I pulled you closer to me, thinking it is enough to keep us together for a minute, or a day maybe. But this calm is always snatched away with the question of how come these strong emotions are labelled wrong? My skin has been tainted, touched by hands that only wanted nothing but heat. You wanted friction, never ending battle between cold and hot. You touch my skin like it is the most poetic act you’ve ever done. I am worse than sin but you forgot your gods for me. Picture sober. It is that night we drank alcohol to test each other’s weaknesses, tip scales and push boundaries. Do not leave me breathing, keep me on my toes, and leave love notes on my skin. I woke up with a bad hangover but what‘s left on my sheets were your scent, spilled beer, and your last words, “Do not stop kissing me.” The gap between finite and infinite lies on my arms and yours, tell me we’d defy odds to keep each other. Your colors beneath my skin, crumbling. In all ways possible, you are my permanent. You snatched my baggage while I slept and when I woke up, I have the color of your eyes to carry. My poetry is yours to sink your teeth in.
Violet. Some says it ignites imagination. Artists crave this color so much. You were the first person to see my art as something to treasure and be intimate with. You are my favorite artist. You painted over the things I wished I never knew about myself. You spilled ink on my skin, thinking they will turn me into solid sculptures of hurt. Carve good things, leave your writing on my skin, I need them there, to remind myself you were there, and really wanted to stay there. Darker shades of this color says sorrow. As we counted days and as they come near the number we feared, stealing glances seemed to be worth more now, seconds drenched in our silences meant the world, shared meals are exchanged with uncertainties and salt on the table. I wish and sincerely hope I never live to see the day when this is left to pieces, in desperate need of repair. I can be your tragedy, but you can never be mine. I fear endings. I cannot face endings. I hold out my hand to tell people I will never lose hope. Delaying the end with delaying the start. My heart is a burning city but you made it out alive. You are my burning city, scorching my skin but I will never find the strength to let go of you. Do not leave me with your I love you’s because we will never end up in good terms. I don’t want us to end in good terms because hope will just eat me out alive. You said before you were in a place between red and blue, that’s violet. Was I a risk worth taking? Was I the safe place? This is close to your favorite color, isn’t it? That’s always how it’s going to be for us. Close enough. Almost there. Almost. Almost.
I don’t want your mouth, I crave your breathing. I don’t want your blue lips, turning violet. Death is for our bad memories, not for our bodies. I don’t want your lungs, I want heavy breathing on days we need not use words to express feelings. I don’t want hands, I want warmth, steady and consistent. I don’t want your voice, I want your throat choking on words rushing and stumbling, stuttering. I don’t want your skin, I want you here. Beside me, cradling me and telling me we’re near perfect, we’re almost there. I don’t want your red heart, I have one already. I want you.
*There is no real end to a rainbow. I hope we never have to find ours.
I love you will all that I am and will be, M. See you soon, my love.