Shades of Men: A Triptych

Blue

He was blue when we were children. Blue like a cheap polyester cerulean sweater. Like stained glass and butterflied and a clear sky on a summer day. Blue like the canvas in a fabric parachute pulled out at recess and sidewalk chalk and my favorite pen in the whole wide world. 

He was blue when we grew up. Blue like the ocean he lived beside. All-consuming, catching me in the undertow and forcing me down til my breath escaped in perfect pearls. Blue like navy cotton briefs. Like an oversized sweatshirt. Like a pool to be tossed into. 

Blue like the first color to ever make me smile, and the first to ever make me cry. 

Gray

He was gray the day he kissed me the first time. A soft gray like a kitten or a skein of yarn. Soft and fluffy.

The first few months I knew him he was a dark charcoal black. Burnt. Smelling of smoke and bonfires and gunpowder. His smile had an edge to it then.

He took me home and was a warm comforting black. A summer night with the stars out and the moon hiding on the horizon. Warm blankets in a dark bedroom.

The day we broke up he was a steel grey. It was cracked and jagged. It matched the sky outside where the rain fell in sheets. Hard and fragile and cold.

A year later he was the fuzzy gray of the sweatshirt he gave me. The worn and weathered gray of the clouds. The hard steel of a silver necklace and the presence of his gray shadow next to mine.

And now? He's the night that held stars I cried under. The glint on the silver rim of his glasses and the wispy smell of smoke from a blown-out match.

Green

You, then, were green. Green like the light that filters through the trees, green like the flat-cap you wore and just fit right. Green like your winter coat and my favorite dress and the grass on the Fourth of July.

You were green like new growth coaxed up after a harsh winter and a forest burn. Green like a bud before it blooms, like a fresh branch without bark yet. 

There is irony then in the way all of my endings will you are when the world around us was finally bursting with color. That you lit a match and sent a hard-won garden into flames right when the flowers were finally blooming. 

Now? You're still green. You're green like...like an old tree. An old dead tree. You're green like the emerald that once hung around my neck. Green like the light in a psychological thriller, or the sky when a tornado comes. Like the surface of a river when the water is barely moving.

Like the color of my eyes when I've been crying.