Red is the start. It’s the test workbooks in science class when we look over at each other and learn about wavelengths of light. The quickly scrawled love letters that ignite our lust. The polka dots of my white dress on our secret first date when we meet at our girls’ school gates and watch the sunset together. It’s your beautiful lips hot and wet against mine, the raging arguments over who might see us. The taste of your dark and perfect skin.
Orange is passion cooling, born from the hot sun of our youthful passion. The Texan summer mornings when our sweet nothings become firmer, shaped by companionship, before you leave for another state, and I wish I could leave with you. Be free at last from my unbending parents. It’s the color of your Arizona State University gym when I visit you, the rind of tartness as we see each other less, yet our love grows stronger.
Yellow is the setting sun of our college graduations. The fear as the distance grows further between us. The third color progression of our time together, the E major undertone that resonates with understanding, which sustains us through the cold autumn days. The times when I struggle to keep up with postgrad work at UNT, when you consider leaving college so you can get a full-time job to support your sick mother. The color of the stripes on your newly loaned motorbike, the smell of sun-warmed leather as I hold you tight.
Green is the plush lawn of our first house in Pacific Heights, the joy and promise of spring, a fresh start that brings back the red heat of our passion. At last free and open for everyone to see. Its lighter tone is the color of the invites you want because you say it matches my eyes, the color of travel plans, of the ceremony in Denmark that formalizes our love to the world. But it’s also your jealousy when I take that new position teaching applied physics at UCSF, the thought of losing me when you meet infatuated Audre from my faculty. The parents we see smiling wide, playing with their kids in the park.
Blue is the color of your loving eyes, our twentieth anniversary together, fifth as married, but it’s not all we hoped for. Blue is harsh winter too. It’s the cold A minor of life when the adoption falls through nine months after state legalization, the hue of a room unused. It’s the tears of our disappointments, the flashing lights when we find our house has been burgled, our privacy assaulted. It’s the burial of your mother at Restland Memorial Park after she finally loses her battle against leukemia, the color of the North Texas Personal Care Home hallways my father walks without remembering why.
Indigo is the deeper love that flows through the difficult blue times, never giving up as things slowly improve. It’s the color of change as the adoption agency calls again, the favorite color of our child Gilbert who grows faster than we believe. The color of the sports bra and matching socks I take off you when you get the promotion at Pfizer, something you’ve deserved for so long. It’s the smell of its soft, static-charged fabric as I tell you how special you are. The same shade as the dress you buy me after my skin cancer scare. The one I wear when I take you to the finest restaurant in the city.
Violet is the whispering of dawn. Powered by the aging sun of our love. The scene we gaze at from our front lawn as we hold hands and worry about our retirement plans. About our son’s life without us. It is our shortening future, when no matter how much you think it’s all in vain, I’ll tell you there’ll always be new joy. It’s the promise that the world will always be better when we’re together, even when it seems to us that things are dark.
And light is the sum of our love, of our life together. The brightness that beams from your smile into the prism of my heart. It’s the mnemonic of happiness, pain, and all colors in between. Our electromagnetic attraction, the evolution of our relationship. The sunlight that shines through each other to give all color in our life—the tones that burn away the grays of a world without you. It’s the polarized therapy you develop at work that leads to a landmark breakthrough in treating skin cancer, when you say you couldn’t have done it without me. The tears as I tell you how proud I am. The rays of warmth after the rain, the colors arcing across our sky and city.
Light is the seven-note symphony, the seven-part story of our life: the seven shades of color that are the spectrum of our love.
© First published by Typehouse
