The day I entered this world, my eyes lit up.
They were a shade of blue that you only see in baby dolls and colored contacts.
Like my birthstone, aquamarine flood my eyes and breathe life into the souls around me.
I was bright blue, like the pure water I was baptized in.
Blue like the baby blankets they give you at hospitals.
The blue that no one can argue with, because everyone thinks blue is beautiful.
One day, I morphed into yellow.
I was the dandelions I made into flower crowns
and the banana Laffy Taffy that always stuck to my pants.
I was yellow sundresses, bright sunlight, and a warm smile.
My hair was the color of a wheat field.
One of my first words was “lellow.”
Lellow like Big Bird and banana runts.
The idea of something so bright, something so happy, soothed my childish brain.
There was a time when I was green.
Like the green of St. Patrick’s day, which I never dressed up for.
I was always pinched.
Green like the baseball diamonds I spent hours on as I watched my brother.
I was the grass I laid in, the grass I played in.
I was the green of an aging plant.
You could see colors swirling in intricate patterns throughout my mind.
The green of maturity;
of gears turning in my head.
Green turned to purple when I was uprooted from my home.
Omaha to Lincoln hit me like a lack of oxygen and turned me purple.
Just like a body without air, my limbs turned dark.
I was purple, like every middle school girl’s favorite color.
The purple of painted fingernails thumbing through Victoria’s Secret magazines.
The purple of trying to fit in with new friends.
I was the purple of colliding galaxies.
My brain was confused. They were making me something new.
They put me in purple high heels and pushed me forward.
“Learn how to walk,” they said.
Everything was the artificial grape that still makes me cringe.
Sometimes, I taste the purple Koolaid on my stained lips.
I’m glad my soul is done being black.
Black like the empty demon eyes that stared at me.
Like the pen that cracked in half and watched its ink flow.
Black like Sharpie tattoos and chokers.
Black mascara tear stains that burned my skin.
I fell deep into the night and into the abyss.
It was so dark that no one saw me fall.
I was blind with only a hint of yellow starlight to guide me.
So I followed it out.
I tracked the starlight through the night.
It was never easy. Sometimes I fell down and was dragged backwards.
But I finally left black.
I’m not all the way back to yellow yet, but at least I’m not black.
Now, I am white.
I am all of my colors wrapped into one.
I am the good and the bad, the clean and the impure.
At first glance, I am a blank page.
I appear to be a paper with no scratches, no eraser lines, no marks of red pens or bright highlighters.
But I am grape Koolaid stains.
I am hands covered in smears of black ink that cover my mouth.
Sometimes, I still eat Laffy Taffy and lemon lollipops.
I climb up tall trees and bask in the glow of leaves in the sunlight to learn something new.
I stare at the blue sky to remember what it feels like to fly.
I am a rainbow, hidden behind an expanse of white.
