♡ it stayed beautiful, even as the hue turned grey ♡

Pre-Napo Poetry (Introduction to Color)
i. a study in unfinished color
ii. overexposure
iii. after translation
iv. colorblindness
v. swatch test

NaPo Poetry (Colors)
i. ivory
ii. moss
iii. crimson
iv. champagne
v. emerald
vi. ice blue
vii. pink
viii. sand
ix. lavender
x. silver
xi. ochre
xii. vermilion
xiii. yellow
xiv. sepia
xv. lilac
xvi.
xvii.
xviii.
xix.
xx.
xxi.
xxii.
xxiii.
xxiv.
xxv.
xxvi.
xxvii.
xxviii.
xxix.
xxx.

i bet you thought this thread was about
pretty, everlasting hues --
was the title that misleading?
this thread is about the shift --
the unsteady alteration
that happens before anything ends.

i think it changes first --
the color, i mean --
long before the actual meaning
makes an appearance.

this is simply an attempt to catch it there,
in that in-between,
where it still looks right if you don't
look too closely,
where the color itself hasn't
fully realized what hue it's turning
before it deepens.

follow along as i pinpoint
the precise hues something turns
when it stops being what it promised
and begins, without warning,
becoming something else entirely.

onward, dreamers -- let us explore.

i went colorblind
and the process was quiet

this was me,
standing in front of something
fully colored, and
i kept calling it the closest thing
to

yellow enough
blue enough
red enough
close enough to
not stop

my eyes learned how to
round out edges as if
there'd been some kind of
delay. and in that moment

everything changed.

this shade is too dark --> dull it
this contrast is so loud --> soften it
this is not the color you remember --> adjust it

until i wasn't seeing color anymore,
just comfortable versions of it. and
i told myself this is what it's supposed
to look like.

because it used to,
because it made sense before.
but i had been standing in front of
something so different the whole time

i thought it was safe until it became
unrecognizable to my own eyes.

ivory is a beautiful shade. she
stands in the firelit doorway
and lets the flames touch her
without ever letting it claim her.

there is something warm about
ivory. she doesn't belong to
sunlight or sin, more like

heat that melts into bone,
she has learned how to oxidize
and stay still, and people
often mistake that for grace.

ivory doesn't take up much space--
no, not like the others do, atleast.
she melts into or becomes the backdrop,
always there.

ivory is not absent, no matter
how much she tries to pass
as such. to her, it's easier to be
mistaken for something gentle
than to be known as something
that had been taken and reshaped.

bright and intoxicating -- that's champagne.
with her showstopping amber eyes she
dances below the glistening spotlight,
looking for him.

moss and champagne have history, you see.
champagne won't admit it, but
she uses moss to fuel her ego --
while he remains stationary,
loving her until she is unloving
to herself.

his greens wrap around her yellows
and they finally lock eyes,
his gaze drifting to the flow of her satin dress,
swinging and brushing against
the dusty, hardwood stage floors.

she knows he watches, and
she doesn't mind. in fact, the thought
of him just admiring from afar-- seated
in the backrow, made her bubbling heart
flutter. she looked for him in every stare,
every set of evergreen eyes.

but alas, champagne was vain.
she cared more about the flashes from
news channels, and the way her
chestnut hair blew away from her
reddened cheeks once she exited the
theatre. once she was home,
moss no longer existed,
only gold.

pure, untainted gold.
and moss stayed there, in the back
row of the theatre, never once resting his
emerald eyes.

he would wait night after night
for champagne to perform
again.

moss's older brother, emerald,
lives underground between
blue topaz and the most iridescent
selenite, with crisp edges that
are sharp enough to injure.

he dreams of what it's like above.
emerald wonders if light is
a language--
something spoken directly onto
the body, something he could
actually grasp with his hands.

like moss, emerald is stationary--
unmoving to us. it's in his dna to
stay put, yet stay brilliant.

emerald wonders what it'd be like
to love, to hurt, to laugh.
most of all, he questions if
he was placed in an open field,
if something came and split the earth
wide enough--

would he grow, like his brother,
or
would he break?
because emerald only ever knew beauty
as something formed under pressure.