chartreuse

loneliness sits in a chartreuse space, it

feigns happiness, its yellow-green brightness

weighs me down, I cannot hold it.

I rejoice in the dark red of alone

the nights to myself, oh the writing, the talking

out loud when no one can hear, but tonight

it folds in on itself, becomes a new color.

I cannot call it “mustard” or “dandelion”

for that implies it also has a shape, or a flavor,

when really it is nothing more than

years of empty heaviness and an impossibly ugly word:

chartreuse. I have begged for a comfortable gray,

but it does not hold comfort, holds only

all of the nights I wished that you were there

[with your sky blue shirt & worn black shoes] but

you weren’t. I’m afraid you never will be. not since

I’ve painted my house all the same shade of ambiguous yellow,

locked myself inside, told you to stop looking

for the chartreuse eyesore that sits just beyond

every neighborhood.