Response to prompt from Gotham Writer’s Interactive workshop – Use color to reflect emotions and/or actions in a poem or story
Feelings in Color
by Ami (Gypsie) Offenbacher-Ferris
When he entered the house
our house surrounded by lush green bushes
heavy with welcoming pink and comforting yellow
flowering hibiscus
Their scent wafted in through the white clapboard door
he left standing open
I could smell the richness of each flower
Bright pink sharply citrusy
The yellow reminding me of warm, sunny days spent on the beach
He stood there so tall so manly
surrounded within an aura of pastel orange
His face, drawn, pinched.
He knew, that I knew and he was afraid
The orange deepened when he asked if he could come in
I answered in the most neutral voice I could muster
much like the neutral he had insisted upon
when we chose our new carpet together
Neutral, yes, that was how I would stay.
“It’s your house, no need to ask to come in,”
I muttered in neutral beige
I like beige, it’s comfortable, safe
I would stay here standing on my beige carpet
and remain neutrally beige he responded that this was our house
I felt my neutral slip, melting into the darker color
of a green so dark it was almost black
A red that I dared not release, least it consume me
He moved towards me, his hand imploring
His sea blue eyes lined with tiny rivers of broken vessels
Had he been crying? For whom had he been crying?
For me or for her?
Beige dissipated fire red filled my eyes
filled my soul while my once warm
beating heart turned ice cold blue
Gypsie’s Wonderful World of Words 