THE COLOUR PALETTE

I use so many words, in my love, in my distance, in all my moods that I have no words to describe my sadness in. I sat down with colours today, I though I’ll paint my sadness and gift it to you. And then you won’t complain that I don’t express and I won’t complain that you don’t understand.

I sat with a colour palette and three brushes of different sizes and a blank paper and a heavy heart.

I started with black; I thought I’ll strike it at the top to denote my gloom. Dark colours are for sorrow, I had heard. But the black looked so pretty that I did not want to stop at all. So I put stroke after strokes. Horizontal, vertical, thin, thick, all across the sheet until it was soaked with my depression and wet with my tears. I touched it with my finger to keep some on my body for later when I am drained of all emotions and need to start somewhere. It all started with a void, they say.

I sat there with my black sheet, black paint brushes, black on my fingers and black dripping from my eyes. But I was not nearly done. The catharsis had just begun. I looked at the palette to choose my next colour and looked at all the bright colours. After the void, came light. So I chose a bright yellow and without waiting for any right proportion of water and colour, spilled it on the sheet. Sometimes, light and darkness are all mixed up. But the yellow didn’t look like light on my black universe. It looked like a kid eagerly waiting to be mixed with the darkness of adulthood. I had thought the yellow would please me just like the black had but it only reminded me of how untidy it all looks if you try to smile through tears. I’ll always be angry with my parents for not letting me cry as a child. For telling me to be bright even if that meant I had to burn the insides of my skin to create radiance around my shadow. So I mixed the yellow on the black with my finger and mixed and mixed it till it looked like a dull evening when the clouds beg to rain but the Sun doesn’t let them. I stand outside on evenings like these, confused, broken and pray for it to rain, or shine. To give me a definite answer.

In search for something definite, I took the bottle of red paint and emptied it on the sheet. Unlike yellow that had fallen on the darkness like little drops of immaturity wanting to ask for brightness, the red fell like blood in a bath tub when you imagine slitting your wrist and lying there for hours before you finally give up and close your eyes. The red was soothing me like it never did before. It was dirty under the red. The combination of a dirty yellow that made the black look like grey but not the grey sky on a windy evening in the hills. A dirty, untidy, sandy grey. The red was a dominating colour on all the confusion. See, you can repair the irreparable, it said to me. This is why you have two hands, two legs, girl. Fate and free will are on either side of your soul. Spill all your will if you don’t like what fate shows to you. So I let the red spill. I lay there for hours, watching it become a pool of blood. But it wasn’t blood I had forced out of my veins. It looked like blood that was finally set free to run in any direction it wanted to. I tried to comprehend the shape it was making, but caught myself. The red doesn’t want to be defined in a shape. Let it flow.

I tilted the sheet and saw it cover all the black and all the yellow until what I had in front of me was a bright vermilion red that did not let me look away. I smiled. Finally there was something I could be proud of- something that people won’t understand but won’t be able to look away either. I lay flat my palms on the sheet and saw my hands soaking the red. I’ll use this red when I lose to fate and forget about my will. My palms will remind me of not my destiny, but my power.

I wasn’t angry anymore. Nor sad. I was awake enough to look at purple and white in the corner smiling at me. Calm, evening colours of love and friendship. Not too pink, nor too blue, I smiled and picked up the bottles to use now that I was not boiling with black or red anymore. But if I used the purple, it’ll only make the sheet darker. Just a coat of resigned forgiveness over all my emotions. You will smile when you look at it but I will forever miss the boldness hidden under it. Some other time, purple.

But white! Oh, white I could use to keep safe all my words, all my colours. You will never know and I will scrape off a little white from the corners whenever I want to see the red, the dirty confused me/yellow or the dark night underneath.

You know what, I don’t want you to understand me anymore. My words are for you, these colours, my secret. My sadness is mine, a treasure only I know how to open and where to keep the key.

And this is how I ended up with a white sheet, black paint brushes and red palms.

“You didn’t paint anything?” You ask.

“No. I’ll just keep this sheet with me and try some other time.”