Life In Monochrome Poem by JAE JAE

I paint my way in black in white,
ominously blind
as you sleep on into a viscous, lulling night—your hair
crammed neatly between my fingers,
the bristles on a brush, I’m making
a new masterpiece:
a failure—
I wonder.

a feat,
I wish ridiculously and
scream till I’m raw,
rubbed open so the optimism is
visible and rough
and sneaking
on into the day, on my
way home
through light and cloud and bright, bright, glaring white
shards of transient hope and the sporadic glassy glimpse of
that deepness of color, that midnight hue,
dark and secret as
that sadness I know
you carry with you like
a knife, gleaming,
waiting to slice out through the skin and
brush against these startled whispering fingers,
thinking they had a piece
of the glitter,
unfurling instead to release
more blood from my hands. dry and thick—
old and curdled as it has been,
untouched by the light:

Currents subside, the wiry brush
clatters far beneath me and my palms are bleeding
ultramarine again,
Monochromatic and suffocatingly dense.

Your hair is only hair
and the dark is only night.

I crawl back into my skin and remember,
No more black and white.