Before I met you, my life was a colouring book that had never been used. The price sticker untouched on the front cover, displaying my worth the world. Yet, nobody was willing to spend the three dollars and ninety-nine cents. Instead people came and tore out the pages, taking one or two that they wanted and leaving the rest behind. Eventually, the spine grew weak and the front cover fell off, leaving the remaining pages exposed.
Then you came along. You saw the tattered spine and the wrinkled pages, yet you seemed not to care. You grabbed your box of Crayola Colored Pencils, paid the three ninety-nine and brought me home.
Each day that I spent with you added color to a different picture. All of the memories we created were documented in color. They started as little sections of the black outline, with the pencil marks going outside of the lines and leaving little white spaces between the scribbles. But you didn’t seem to notice, so neither did I.
The pictures grew along with us. Soon the little outlines of dogs and flowers became intricate butterflies, with patterned wings and detailed bodies. We filled those in, sometimes forgetting to fill in a small white section in a corner, but you promised we’d go back another time and color those in too. And I believed you.
It was nine years before we reached the final picture. By now, our colored pencils were worn out, some lost and broken, others so short that we had to hold them with ******* and press lightly to ensure the tip didn’t snap off. We sat and colored in silence, having run out of things to discuss. The only colors left were our two favourites, mine- purple, and your’s- blue. Yet, every time I glanced up to check the progress, there was no blue on the page. You said you were going to buy us a new book to fill together. I waited for days, saving the last picture for when you came back home. Instead, I went back and filled in the empty spaces from before in purple, not wanting to use up your blue. Eventually, I finished those and you had still not come home. I went through and fixed each scribble, filling in every last white space with my purple pencil. It had been almost a year now, but I kept waiting, willing myself to save the last picture for when you came home. A year became two, and when our anniversary came and passed without a trace of you, I sat myself down and flipped to that last page.
Today, I colored the final picture in my coloring book by myself. It was a picture of the two of us, holding each other close and smiling.
The only color on the page was purple.
written circa winter 2016