He was dripping amber, the color of burst fuses.
I cut myself on his lips, jagged stone jaw.
I was pistachio green, growing under
stucco stones with worms and snow.
We crossed over, a piece to the other like
a schoolyard trade. At the end of us, the spiral years,
we were a mess of gray, which was not our in between color.
There was too much of him or too little me or maybe
when people crash into each other, expecting to bleed
the blood of one another, it is the Hollywood notion
that love is pink and red and there.
This was so painful and real and raw— it broke my heart, because I so remember being “pistachio green,” waiting for what so very often passes for love in a fictional world you, as did I, honestly expect (or expected) to one day inhabit. “Too much of him or too little me”— you are an old soul in a beautiful young person. We so-called “grown ups” find our colors not blending sometimes. But when it DOES blend, it’s exquisite. How we wish we could paint it all for you, to save you from what we once felt when we, too, were a mess of gray.
So beautiful, Tennessee. Thank you.