You keep a rainbow in your pocket for when the days are too grey and your heart beats too slowly. When clouds descend, you take it out and turn it to catch the light. The colours of your heart’s refraction.
Red is your mother’s lipstick. A pout and a pucker reflected in the mirror. Then the same repeated phrase— ‘this is how to get through a bad day, you see?’ Your crimson secret.
Orange is a fleeting memory. A paper bag bursting on the street, fruit scattering everywhere. Kids rushed like ants and scooped up the tangy globes, biting into stolen treasure and giggling as sweet juice dripped from their mouths and banished any shame.
Yellow is a daffodil in your grandmother’s garden. Those days, toward the end, her world diminished, save for the flowers that bent in the breeze like a hello. Your grandmother greeting them in return. The lesson imparted: this too is joy.
Green is a cold river in summer. Your sister screaming, eyes ablaze as if summer was eternal. In the depths, trout flashed green and rose. You pinched her toes and told her they were biting. Your father on the riverbank watching and laughing. That sound, caught by the river, forever.
Blue is a song picked on a six string. A dream of California, where melancholy never seems to last too long. Notes extending, letting you know that this too will pass.
Indigo is the jeans he wore. Hair falling over his eyes, but you sensed the way they followed you around the room. Nonchalant, until you touched him. Then he shivered.
Violet is a powdery pastille dissolving on your tongue and gone in an instant. Pleasure so fleeting, but its aftertaste lingers.
Happiness. It’s a spectrum kept safe in the folds of your pocket.
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