Love

Rachel Wielgopolski

The color of love is gray

not the silver-gray like the moon

or wispy gray clouds before a storm.

No, the color of love is green-gray –

the color that can’t pair with anything.

Not red wines that clink over candlelight

or sweet white wines poured with family.

No, love is drying green vomit gray.

It’s the color of a corpse’s skin after a week,

the color of her decaying nails beneath the polish.

It isn’t the color of thunderstorms:

lightning brightens up the sky at random

and there’s no light in love.

Love is too dingy to be compared to

a polluted river, smog-filled raindrops, cigarette smoke.

Oh, cigarette smoke. Love smells like cancerous ash

from the pale lips of your pale lover

in the dark gray evening, on the gray back seat of your car.

Love doesn’t kiss you after what he does.

His tongue turned gray.

But not the good gray, the fun gray.

Your love turns gray like the stones of his house,

like the color of his ignored phone

with ignored messages.

Yes, love is the worst shade of gray one has ever seen.

You’d wish for the vibrant vomit

colors that wait in your stomach

after he slams the door and walks away

leaving me to put your shoes on

and drive off.

No, the color of love is gray.

It’s not the color of invisible lines connecting the stars

to form constellations.

The color of love is what his hair looks like in

the backseat of your car.

It’s the color of his graphic tee shirt.

Love is gray, but not even the shade of gray

that is the flaky skin on your arms that he touches.

For that is too pretty a color.

Love is the color you turn

as the moonlight fades from view.

Empty songs turn gray through the radio

playing as you turn the key

and force yourself not to look back.

Love drives off without a second thought.

The color of love is gray.