Color

I am simple.

I am a simple woman who likes simple clothes and simple food. I find no significant meaning in people or objects, I simply just exist in this home of mine. My very simple home that holds no plants or fancy televisions or abstract art. No flower vases or pictures of my nieces and nephews on my walls; I like things simple.  

I am very peculiar about the colors in my home. I like simple colors. White carpets and white tile flooring, the walls and cabinets grey. I exist in almost no color at all. I dislike orange and violet; it hurts my eyes. Yellow and green don’t flow along with the personality my home wishes to have, and all the shades of pink remind me of a childhood I was never blessed with. I don’t know how I feel about red yet.

Red was introduced to me today.

There was no knock on my stained wooden door or the whistling sound of my door bell. There was only the sound of glass shattering. At first, there was a few seconds of silence. Then there was grunting from the person trying to squeeze their way through the now open entrance to my home.

Red is a man and a color.

A man, slim and strong featured. He holds no emotion on his face; he looks plain. He blends with my walls in his apparel, he looks like he belongs in my home. I liked his color choices. His simple black shoes with no laces and his plain grey t-shirt and pants. The only color I don’t like on him is the color his eyes hold, a dark blue someone could drown in. The blue that sits above the darkest pit in the ocean. Blue doesn’t fit in my home but he looks simple and I like simple.

Red is simple.

I stood in my kitchen and he stood across from me with glass around his feet. I am clean person, I clean to pass time so the sight of the glass made my heart leap a little. There are a few ways to clean broken glass. I learned from my childhood when my father was a drunk. He would force me to stand in one spot and throw empty bottles as close as he could without hitting me. If I screamed or cried, he would only laugh and keep drinking. Sometimes I would stand for hours is what it seems, never flinching when a piece of glass found its way lodged in the scar tissue that was trying to heal from weeks before.

Silence is simple.

I said nothing and he said nothing. We are one in the same; two simple people who have nothing to say to one another but the relationship is pure. I need him and he needs me or we wouldn’t be here.

Glass is not simple.

It comes with too many outcomes. It will either shatter or it won’t. When you pick up the broken pieces, it will either cut you or it won’t. Glass is not very reliable. I never wanted windows in my home. I much rather live in the dark with a lamp or two. I prefer walls. Brick walls, wooden walls, they seem more durable.

 The window, which the man came through, was the window I hated the most. It was unnecessary. A long rectangle of glass right by my door that had no purpose other than for me to peer out of time to time. To think that if that glass panel wasn’t right by my door, the man wouldn’t have gotten in.

I’m glad he’s here.

I find that it is much easier to die than it is to live. If you stayed inside, maybe it would be a little less hard to die. But that theory has gone with the shattered glass and lies with the man in front of me. It is possible to be simple and complicated all together. He grabbed the knife I’d left out from the night before and crept towards me. I said nothing.

Glass is more durable than skin.

The knife pierced mine with ease as if it were a route it was destined for. I said nothing.

 Life is red.

Blood creeps upon my carpet and pools on my white tile. I lay in the puddle of it. I never thought red would be this beautiful in my home. It matches the walls; brings a certain enjoyment to my home that it has never known.  

Red is simple.

Glass is dramatic but an easy clean; stains are worse. You can use bleach on white carpet to get rid of them but you can never quite get rid of it all. There’s always a trace that is left behind and it becomes a part of your home. I would know. The blood that pours from my body is covering a stain I left many years ago; a new stain to cover the old but it will still exist in some way. Oh the mess I’ve made.

To think I’ve had such a lovely color inside of me all this time. I wish I could say something now, to thank the man for exposing my home to red.

Red stained his forearm and dripped from his hands as he walked throughout my home. I wished it no other way but for him to spread red all over. Colors are only basic until they make a statement it seems. Blue is simple. He made a dramatic statement only for the jewelry I held upstairs: one necklace, one ring and one bracelet is all my life is worth.

Red is simple and blue is not.

I never liked blue, there’s no other significance other than the sky, the sea, and the man’s eyes.

 I like the man.

I am his canvas, his bold statement in life. I never had enough courage to be bold. To leave my troubled home or to add color to my wardrobe or to ride a roller coaster. I am simple. I like the feeling of paper and number two pencils. I like simple food and simple colors.

 He left out the way he came leaving me in a pool of color, a pool of wasted life. But it is beautiful, this mess I made.

I thought darkness would be my friend. I see no darkness, only red. My new home, a simple home with a stain, to never be removed.

 Red is simple.