Warning: This work has been rated 18+ for mature content.
They’ve been telling me I don’t know what green looks like. My friends and my parents. The counsellor that sits cross-legged on my floor. My doctor. The police. They say I’ve gotten it wrong all this time. But how can that be true when I see it all day and all around?
Green looks like citrus, the tangy first lick of a lime slice post-tequila. Green looks like leaves on drifting branches that tickle the air in slow sweeping motions. Green looks like the grass, shiny and slick with morning dew. Green is life, it’s nature and my soul and it’s you.
You are green. Or you were. Green as the tailored suit you ordered to pair with your paisley tie. Green as the flecks in your eyes when you smiled in the sunshine. Green as the lawn we rolled back on when your hand and your heart reached for mine, and the stems of the roses you held towards me in apology, and the garden we tended on the balcony. You were green, my love, sterling green.
I found a box on the shelf high up and inside was your love note to me written not in words but in accommodations. Knowledge of what I’d need. You knew I couldn’t stomach garlic for real but the powders were perfectly fine. You had sourced me a yearlong supply and stashed it high for the most unpleasant surprise unearthed in the absence of you. The labels are green and the box is green and why does everyone say “red” when they’re wrong?
I told them about when you talked me out of sourcing a wheelchair and they pointed and they said “see? Don’t you see?” and I told them “of course” but I lied. I only saw green. I can’t tell them that. That’s my most, most profound shame. You had loved me, loved me in the way that translated me. Loved me in the way that knew what was best for me. How my limbs operated, how my heart pitter-pattered. What I could or could not eat, or say, or do. My body set the rules unless it was you, and you always knew what was best. So I say “yes of course I see red” but I don’t. I still don’t. I just know the right words and the order they go in, but I never saw red. Not now. Not then. Not at all. I just saw you, and my love you were green. Perfect green.
Or maybe I never saw colour at all until the aftermath of you. Maybe what I thought had been colour was just the whisperings of possibilities that didn’t manifest. The ring I never wore, the children I never bore. You were green, or you were something. And now you are nothing but the dark grey night that smothers your side of the bed and the inky blackness that fills the doorway when you don’t come home to me. You are the fingerprints left on my upper arm and the chips in the drywall my friend said to cover with putty but I can’t. It’s all I have left of you. The grey matter that spills from beneath the cracked paint where you broke through. Grey.
Just grey.
Dreadful grey.
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I love the imagery with color! The color associations with green, red and gray are really interesting. Green could imply rightness and safety, or a generally positive meaning, while red could suggest a “red flag”, somebody who isn’t safe in a relationship or somebody who is “wrong”. Near the beginning, it seems to be implied that the narrator’s friends and family told them that the lover(?) was a red flag. I really like how gray is used near the end as well. Gray is usually used to indicate grief, blankness, or lacking, like how the absence of “you”, presumably the partner, leaves the narrator. While it isn’t exactly clear what happened to the narrator’s lover(?), I think it’s implied that he died in the last few lines “…grey matter…where you broke through.”
Your fifth paragraph seemed normal to me at first until several rereads later, I caught, “What I could or could not eat, or say, or do.” At first, this seems simply like the lover(?) knowing the limits of the narrator, but “say”? This seems to suggest that the narrator was controlled by their lover, in speech, movement, and possibly more.
On the first read, the narrator seems to be retelling of a beautiful love, where their partner was attentive and caring of them, but as you go into the details, you slowly and gradually begin to realize the hidden aspects that don’t seem as perfect as they are first portrayed. I really liked this because as I began to unearth it, it felt like I was discovering slight irregularities in a testimony.
I’m gonna be a bit more specific now, but this is all my own interpretation so it might be off. At the beginning of the story, what struck me the most odd was when the narrator mentions the police. This makes me think that there was a crime committed, an act of violence, or murder, or something else. By the end, the narrator also says “You are the fingerprints left on my upper arm and the chips in the drywall…The grey matter that spills from beneath the cracked paint where you broke through.“ this almost seems to be an implication of abuse, since fingerprints aren’t usually caused by a light touch. Compared to “touch” or “warmth”, “fingerprints” seem to be more visible. Your work seems to tell of a red-flag relationship that ends with the death of the narrator’s lover.
I really love this writing and how you leave it with subtle implications that can be left up to interpretation! The color imagery is really good and the ending leaves good closure. Rereading this piece and figuring out its meaning was super fun and I hope that you like my analysis!
i like how this piece shows being in love with someone as the color green. the more i thought about it the more i realized this is such a recurring color in the world and when you talk about grey that made me feel like how it feels to be out of love with someone, and what happens when we let ourselves sit in the "grey" versus the "green". great writing great pacing keep writing!