Allison's Archives

The room in which I lost my first milk tooth was orange / the shade of rubber tree barks when they are tapped / the color of the popsicles my mother sold over her childhood summers / bedtime stories associate this hue with hell’s flames / and I might have believed it / but maybe it was just a familial hearth all along / can both coexist / how many associations can a color have / how many definitions can a person assume

The fruit grows high and out of reach / flourishes best in tropical climates and under suns / maturing individually instead of in bunches / we have all that in common / the fruit and I / I peel myself into equal parts and hand portions out / intended sweetness / but in the tongues of some I am tangy / bitter

I think the sound of applause is orange / so I look and listen everywhere I go / yet it slips through sidewalk cracks / and spins in the laughter of people I will never see again / and by the time I catch it / it’s in the rustle of late autumn leaves / I find it in a dying thing / oh sweet orange / always just shy of my reach / on my birth certificate / but not a birth right

If you close your eyes and listen not too carefully / there is orange in my name / let me be the one to notice any difference / the burden of details always cradling my shoulder / I can surrender my dreams but not my words / my happiness but not my peace / is the color orange something one can surrender / and is surrendering the same as sacrificing / if I fold myself over a laundry rack under an orange sun / do you think my wounds will dry up nicely / if I flip myself inside out / will you see less or more metaphorical scars / in what angle should I stand under the sun to emphasize the orange

Do you even want to see the orange?