I think of you in colours that don't exist --
that's not to say that I don't think of you at all,
because, of course, technically every colour exists:
Even the ones we cannot imagine,
Even the ones we cannot see.
Even the ones either side of the spectrum that light up the notes used for money, not music, because the notes used for money
are
not
always
real.
Even the ones either side of the spectrum that light up the heat of your body like your presence does the room
and your eyes do my smile
and your smile does my eyes;
You tell me that technically every colour exits,
even if we cannot see it,
even if we cannot imagine it –
For think of it now.
Imagine in your head a colour that does not exist.
Now describe it to me.
Is it a splash of red with tints of a yellowy-blue?
Is it a pinky-purple hue,
a hint of green, turquoise, maroon, sapphire, olive, violet?
Does it already exist in colours we already have names for,
have we lived so long that every thought we think is no longer our own,
every thought we think has been thought of before,
I think of you in colours that don’t exist
but so has everyone else.
We cannot see it,
we cannot imagine it.
But if we cannot imagine something that does not exist
simply because we are confined to describing it
in the words of an already existent language,
what does that say about us?
We can imagine a waterfall of chocolate,
a glass elevator bursting through the roof;
shrinking potions and growing potions and talking rabbits.
We can imagine standing on the top of a building
looking out over the greying city lights
with lungs full of water
a noose round our necks
and the sole belief in our heads that we are jumping to fly
We can rewrite the future and make up the past
We can imagine wizards and witches and fairies and goblins
We have unicorns, ******* it,
we have God.
And yet when I present to you a lover,
an artist,
standing in front of you now,
yearning to make you his canvas,
You are too scared to fall in love,
too scared to admit that you don’t have the words in your encapsulating little language to describe the things that you feel towards him.
For he does not need language,
he does not need words.
He will stand here now,
in front of you,
and let you grace his collarbones with a diamond noose,
crown his withered corpse in a wreath of daisies,
dress his bones in slashes of rubies.
He will tear himself apart for you,
for you,
for you to watch galaxies flow out of his veins,
velvet red blood screaming unwritten poetry,
a torrent of unimagined colours pouring into him and out of him
and with his one last remaining breath
and a trembling hand,
he picks up his paintbrush
and draws you into orbit,
and like his fingers used to trace your shattered ribcage
like the keys of an ivory piano,
he traces the outline of your lips.
And at last you draw breath,
to whisper his name, to whisper your love, and all that remains
is silence.
And you choke on the air and sound is still
for all words exist so none can be spoken and suddenly everything
is black.
And I think of you in colours that don’t exist
like the wolf howls in lament of the side of the moon he will never see
for all colours exist, and when I think of you,
there are none.
*-j.s.
