Poem #18 of the 30/30 challenge for Poetry Month
Starving for color. Everything in
sight is beige and grey. Every stone,
every plowed field, every damn stretch
of highway is a wretched monotone,
devoid of color.
God, I’m starving for yellows and
reds and blues. I need green just to
keep me—us—breathing.
But you don’t seem to think there’s
a problem. You think brown is normal,
that tan is simply a shade of reality,
that dark white and light black define
the spectrum.
If I didn’t love you, I’d wring your
goddamn neck. But I am stuck here,
adhered to this place where I can’t change.
My future is no more malleable than
the past. I’ve become tied to you as
we intended, I suppose, but not as I
expected. My wishes and dreams have
become impossibilities.
Because of who and what you are, I would
rather not follow my dreams than lose the
part of me you have become.
Goddamn this improper world that
makes it impossible for me to hate what
has ripped me from my dreams and thrown
me into a cavern from which there is no escape.
I loathe this place, but I love why I am here.
