Photo: Quarry, Hawaiian Ocean View Estates, Big Island, Hawaii
How I Came to Know the Color Beige
I bought a sweater that was
like snow in the department store
but, on me, it was sand.
I worked with a pasty woman
who refused to wear makeup
to hide her insomnia.
I lived in a small apartment
with someone I couldn’t love
for half of my young life.
I kissed a man who drank
gallons of coffee; his breath
was stained, too, like the sky
above the crowded city, where
by 4th grade, I realized the crayon
named “flesh” meant the world
is mean.
*The prompt was simply to start with a color (you could pull a crayon out of a box randomly; you could even have one of those giant boxes of crayons with even more colors).
