Unicorns

I told my little sister
that Santa wasn't real
and that I'd killed a unicorn
and her coat hook was its horn.

Bronze

In the Bronze Age, I started the first war.
Our wives stared at us with stony faces,
silent tears running down their faces
at each and every death.
Fewer hunters.
I smiled, though,
because a bloody spear
was such a rush.

Gold

"What is this made of?" I asked the jeweler, fondling the necklace. It really was lovely.

He grinned at me, a grin meant to be friendly, to reassure, to sell his product. The grin was terrifying, revolting, nauseating. "White gold of the highest quality," he assured me. His teeth were tinged the slightest gray.

I dropped it away from me, as if disgusted. I don't know why I did it, I just did it. "Gold?" I echoed.

To be honest (though this only occured to me somewhat later), I really did find gold somewhat distasteful in so many ways. All well enough in its place, but it was so much easier to accidentally make gold trashy than silver, or glass.

Or perhaps I was overly sensitive to such things. Ellen told me I was overly sensitive to such things.

But I was also overly sensitive to sneering, and when the man sneered at me, I felt guilty something awful. So I bought the necklace, even though it was about a hundred dollars more than I strictly should have been paying for any one thing.

So I gave up morning coffee for a month.

And that's what made me not get hit by the bus.

Silver

I blew her kisses and she caught them
--tell me about the gold standard--
we both prefer silver.
I go for the unobtruse, hence our study dates.

White

The bigoted bastards changed the sign from
"Whites Must Be Worn on All Courts at All Times"
to
"Whites Only on the Courts."

Gray

Rosa was still beautiful, not that her hair was gray.
Her smile still stopped his heart--
quite literally, and he wisped away like a puff of smoke.

Cream

Peaches and cream
and roses
and the thorns that scratch
to make the roses themselves--
you've mastered these colors.

Someone might say you're pretty
but I disagree.
You're something,
but you're sure not pretty.

Here's the truth:
I think you're sort of crazy
but still sort of awesome
but this isn't a love poem,
or anything.

You're pretty decent
and maybe we could be friends,
the whole neurotic
insane thing aside.

I'm thinking that
maybe, though,
you should forget about the roses
because peaches are better
with just regular cream.

Pink

Suzanne Marie Gibbs
(Suzie, familiarly)
always chewed bubble gum
and was reminiscent of cotton candy.

But when I licked her hand,
she tasted just like everyone else.

Mauve

To punish my parents
I dyed my hair
the color of my name
and didn't apply to Princeton.

They adored their alma mater.

When I accepted Yale
their mouths gaped and sighed
and spoke deadened words:
"You can't do this,
Mauve."

Eggplant

"This still tastes like cheese," I accused.

Nan shook her head. "It's not, though. It's eggplant. And it doesn't taste like cheese. You're insane."

I leaned my head on my hands. And frowned. "I do not like it."

Nan's skirt was slightly twisted to one side, so the bow was somewhat behind her left hip, instead of smack dab on top. She placed her hands smack dab on top of both hips and gave me that patented Nan stare. "You will eat it or you will eat nothing. This is what your mother left for me to make."

When Nan babysat, you didn't get away with any nonsense; it was completely the opposite of having Dan babysit. Nan didn't let you play GameBoy under the covers after you were supposed to be asleep, didn't read you more than two stories no matter how much you begged, and didn't let you eat only half your dinner and still have dessert.

But it was still always more fun when Nan came, because she played Scrabble Jr. (even though she knew more words) or watched a movie with me until ten minutes before my bedtime, because she knew it took me eight minutes to get ready for bed. Then she'd tuck me in tight and kiss me goodnight, and would leave the door open just enough that I could see the light from the hall.

Danny always had some sort of work to do, and when he tucked me in, he always left some part of me cold.

I picked away at my eggplant and Nan kissed me on the head.

Black

"Black," I said.
"As pitch," you finished.
"White," said I.
"As snow," said you.

When you lost the bet
you had to use only idioms
for the rest of the day.
I giggled every time.

We played hopscotch
just to pass the time
and chased the adventure
with actual scotch.

By the end of the night we were wasted
and your idioms took on
something of a ridiculous nature,
but I didn't notice, much.

You kissed me goodnight,
said, "Apples eat doctors,"
and threw and orange
into my lap.

Magenta

Your face turned pink with pleasure
whenever Magenta walked across the screen
and you hugged your replica-doll tight.

I envy you your childhood.

Purple

I swirled my fingers in the paint.
"Do you still?"
she asks. I nod, but I'm unsure.
With purple, she starts first.

We painted ourselves
in warlike ways and prepared to do battle
with the boys from across the street.
I feared losing.

Her weapon of choice was
her dad's broken tennis racket,
the one with no strings. I fought
with a jump rope.

When we lost
--"Better luck next time, losers!"
they jeered--
she never once said it was my fault.

Navy

Blue didn't hardly describe my mood that day; I was positively navy. I watched the shooting stars alone, knitting a blanket, and making wish after useless wish. I was sick and tired of political cartoons that didn't bring you home.

Do you remember back in elementary school, when they told us that our votes could change anything? They told us that we had to go vote, that it was our civic duty, that we'd make an impact on the world.

I'm starting to realize more and more that everything they taught us in elementary school was bullshit. Christopher Columbus didn't befriend the fucking Indians, okay?

I voted for the war to end, even though my family mocked me for being a stinking liberal.

Not that I'm not glad you didn't join the army. If you hadn't, you'd never have been able to afford college and if you hadn't been able to afford college, I never would have met you. And maybe that means I wouldn't be missing you now, and I wouldn't be doing our tradition alone, but that doesn't much seem worth it.

I might feel differently if you get hurt.

That night, flushed in navy, I kept making stupid useless wish after stupid useless wish because I didn't think it could hurt, regardless.

Pine

Seventy- six trombone led the big parade and I hid up in the big pine tree to see it all. You led the band with skill and ability. I was so proud of you, as you gritted your teeth in concentration.

Blue

Okay, so it's six months later, and I have a new boyfriend.

Oh, and everyone thinks I'm a huge fucking bitch for it. That's what your (former, I suppose) best friend called me today. Classy, huh? I mean, for the last six months none of them would look at me because they felt guilty, but now that I'm no longer single, they feel like they can despise me. Which is almost, almost funny, because you were always that guy who was friends with all of his exes, and tried to make me give mine the benefit of the doubt.

I mean, you were reckless and you did stupid stuff and you were irresponsible (and indirect cause of the breakup-that-wasn't, because it caused the fighting) but you always were remarkably decent in that way.

Teal

"What in god's name did you do to your hair?"

"Dyed it."

"Need I remind you that you're currently looking for a job?"

"You do not. Though you should quit yours and become the Queen of Condescension."

"Hilarious. But accenting your look with freaking blue hair isn't necessarily the best way to get employment, you know."

"It isn't blue."

"Are you pulling that metaphysical crap with me again? It's blue. I can see that it's blue."

"It's teal."

"Oh. Forgive me. Because you will get so many more job offers with teal hair as opposed to blue."

"You're doing it again."

"Sorry. But seriously. You're lucky I love you."

"I am. But if I wasn't that lucky, I could've just shown you that I bought a wig."

Cyan

From underwater, the world was gray and brown, with flashes of something that was almost cyan. I held my breath as tightly as I could. I liked things better under here, quiet and muted and safe and sure.

They said that drowning was among the worst ways to die, but I wasn't buying it. I could think of a hundred ways to die that seemed more unpleasant including, but not limited to, dismemberment, being attacked by a bear, getting speared by a swordfish, and cholera. I began to feel a little dizzy, but it was essentially nice down here.

And sure, there were things I would miss out on because I was drowning here. But those were small and negligible, I supposed. There were a lot of bad things I would miss out on, too, so it could be worse. And maybe it took a level of insanity to take my own death with that level of rationality, but it was to my advantage.

A line of bubbles raced towards the surface.

Sky

I tried to count all the clouds. They were moving slowly, but the farther I looked, the more there were to count. My sister was trying to catch ants on a stick and put them in a jar. Mama was making hamburgers on the grill and Dad was reading the Sunday newspaper even though it was already Wednesday evening.

The clouds started moving more quickly through the sky and I started counting faster.

Rain started to fall and put out the grill, flooded Sara's anthill and half dissolved Dad's newspaper. Everyone ran inside and planned on having cereal for dinner.

I stayed outside and tried to count the clouds that had ruined our picnic.

Sage

"Pass the sage," I demanded, holding my hand out behind me. This was a delicate situation we had here. The Christmas Soup was at a crucial stage, and this was Morgan's first Christmas with the family, and I would not allow him to have imperfect Christmas Soup.

Morgan walked over to our mother. "Pass the sage!" he repeated in his piping voice. A moment later, he clambered up onto his chair and handed me the sage. He grinned at me. He was missing three teeth, making him seventy-five cents richer.

Initially, I hadn't been to jazzed when Bob and Nancy, the 'rents, had told me they were adopting some kid. I had spent eighteen years being the youngest, and wasn't really looking to pick up a younger brother. But Bob and Nancy hadn't responded well to the whole empty nest thing. I wanted to come home from school and not have fingerpainting on the walls of my bedroom.

Chartreuse

They gave me a new face to match my identity. Well, it wasn't really a new face, but I got a spray tan, so I looked sort of different. I didn't like it.

When I got off the plane in San Antonio with the agent at my side, I told the flight attendant, "I'm in the Witness Protection Program."

I thought Marshall Martins, the short agent chick, was going to have an embolism. That would've been messy. We had a harried dash through the airport, as if maybe, just maybe that flight attendant was the one person who didn't want me to testify.

"If you do that again," she threatened me, "I'll kill you myself."

I put my nose in the air. "Maybe next time you shouldn't make me wear this hideous chartreuse sweater," I told her haughtily.

She sneered at me. 'Maybe next time you shouldn't fink on the mob."

Lime

I chose lemon and you chose lime and we even ate the peels. It was the worst dare of the night. We came out of it with streaming eyes and immovable grimaces. The whole thing was actually kind of healthy.

That was the first time we met, do you remember? It's funny, but even though now I know everything about you, I can't even remember if you wore glasses back then. You always wear your glasses now that we're friends.

So I dare you to eat an entire lime, peel and all, and then look at me and tell me if you can remember everything we said that night. Let's see if it changes anything this time around.

Green

Sometimes, when I'm carving the turkey,
I think you'd look prettier,
dead and pale and rotting.

And then I remember you're a great conversationalist.

Olive

I swirled the olives around the jar. My sister was preparing drinks for her and her husband. I was drinking cranberry juice.

"What're you thinking about?" I asked.

She raised an eyebrow. "This booze?"

Brown

Playing in the dirt made my white hands brown.
My mother hated dirt.
The mud made me happier than anything.
I was six years old.

That should've been the sign, right then, that I'd be the abolitionist.

Burgundy

Red

Every single one of us in this room was a criminal. With varying severity, we had each broken the law, some with tiny fractures, others shattering it into hundreds of pieces. I played Cat's Cradle with an arms dealer in the corner. Funny, but it was always the petty criminals that fought. A thief had an embezzler in a chokehold. Marcus, the treasonous clerk, raised an eyebrow at me. I could have stopped them if I wanted to. There was a knife at the small of my back.

Those of us that knew violence knew it was pointless in here. In here, an elaborate murder didn't save your sister, and it didn't give your country the upper hand. It didn't stop another killer and it didn't prevent a dangerous disease from spreading. The only thing murder did in here was murder. They'd fill up the dead man's spot in a day or two, anyway.

Orange

We ate eight oranges, shared them, and each one tasted a little different, so it was almost like eating candies. I kind of thought it was better than candy, and you were diabetic, so you didn't know. We were nine years old and you had just moved in next door.

You were just the neighbor kid, so we were friends. We were friends because it was convenient for us to be friends, and so our parents made us play together Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. For three years we played together Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. And then we hit middle school.

I really don't think you understand what a disaster middle school was for us. I mean, you had all these friends, and all these girlfriends, and you always had plans, and you became a soccer star. But the pinnacle, the absolute cherry on the cake, was that time when, instead of giving me a ride home from school, you drove through that puddle to splash me.

By the time I got home, my hair had frozen to my face.

Coral

We slept on the beach that night and only woke up in the morning because it was starting to rain. The night before, you had been angry because your mother had taken away the keys to your car just to spite you. So I picked you up and we drove out to the beach even though the signs told us that was illegal. After all, what are friends for?

By morning, you were laughing at the raindrops. We made fun of everyone who'd ever sucked, and ate the peanut butter and rice cakes and built a sandcastle that was taller than we were.

Bits of coral washed up on the beach and we put them in our pockets.

"Thanks for coming," you said. We were positively drenched.

Goldenrod

So there's this story from when I was a little kid, back when my sister used to live with us. She offered to trade me a goldenrod crayon for my favorite stuffed animal. I thought goldenrod meant literally a rod of gold. I thought it would be cool to have a gold crayon. She wouldn't trade me back when I figured it out.

Fast forward ten years.

I didn't still sleep with the stuffed tiger, but when my sister left, she took the damn thing anyway. And she left me a goldenrod crayon in its place.

Yellow

Perhaps I'm being way too poetic here, but I think everything gets quieter when it snows. Even my family--even my family--was nigh on silent when I woke up later than usual (because of their silence). The curtains still colored the light coming through my window yellow instead of white, but there was a certain quality to it that caused me not to worry I'd overslept.

I went downstairs, sleepily shoving my hair out of my eyes. I had this new haircut, you see, and while I liked it because it made me look, in the mornings, like an actual human being instead of Cousin It, I now had to sleepily shove my hair out of my eyes every morning. "Good morning," I mumbled to my dad, who was sitting at the kitchen table, reading the obituaries.

Now, my dad is not the guy who has time to leisurely sit around reading the newspaper every day. I wished he was. He wished hes was, and I only wished it because he wished it. But, no. My dad was in the estate furniture business, which meant he sold dead people's furniture, so he always knew who was dead.