Long had I tried to paint myself a life of beautiful, vivid hues,
But my own ignorance, my own pain, saw my brushstrokes bedecked in grays.
Charcoal, beige, slate and others, all failing to capture the brightness
Of the life I wished to lead.
You were my color! Blues, reds, purples and greens,
You showed me real saturation, and oh what a marvelous sight it was,
What a marvelous sight we were, hand in hand, ready to splash the world,
Then you left, and the world returned to gray.
Gone were those precious paints, gone is the supplier of them
You stuck around a while, but in the end you are gone,
And all that's left is gray.
I have not been well in the gray.
I have labored to produce my own colors, to find my own reds, blues and greens, but you were my color,
And all of it feels like nothing and less, next to what you gave me.
Like a child trying on clothes too big for her.
I've clung to this gray, this lack of vision.
I've held fast against despair as much as I can,
Born it desperately in the hope you'll come back.
I've told myself I'll never paint in colors you didn't give me,
Because if I do, then one day you'll come back and give me more.
I wish you could see me, see what you wrought.
Leaving didn't free me, it killed me, shot me dead and sent me to this gray world.
I've thought if you saw, maybe you'd take pity, maybe you'd be touched,
Maybe you'd see I'm nothing without you.
But I am not nothing without you, for there is one thing I've always been.
I am the dull, the dim, the dismal.
I am the color of worn out clothes and dust caked faces.
I am what is left when what was has been worked down to the bone.
And when I am more than the grim scaffolding of a person,
There will still be a part of me that the color does not reach.
There will be a piece of me forever lost to the gray now,
The piece that you rescued,
The piece that you abandoned.
For that, damn me, I will always love you,
That piece will hold it forever, gray in the face of overwhelming brightness.
But I can't keep clutching at grief and calling it loyalty.
I need to tell myself I will never get your colors back.
You may never see what happened to me
You may never see how much of the girl you loved died so that some part of her could live,
But I will be here. Gray and still here, like unpolished steel,
Cold and durable, I. Will. Survive.