Color Wheel

Red tastes like cinnamon and menthol, crinkling inside cough drops and candy
wrappers crammed in backpacks, slivers melting on fingers pink with fever. Its bitten and
sucked and slurped from medicine cups till it flushes faces with sickness, passion, frenzy,
or joy. It crumples like paper and broken hearts, and bleeds like pens screwed loose,
scribbling hurt feelings in diaries and blotting the pages. Its viscous like honey and dries
fast, crystallized on cherry soda bottles and painted nails and swollen eyelids that angry
fists rubbed raw. Its a skin irritant, an itch on the back of your neck beneath the glare of
the sun, a sting in the soles of runners feet. It smells like something burning in the oven,
and can feel like scalding metal, gripped too tightly by hungry hands. It sounds like
glossed lips smacking, inches from the bathroom mirror, pursed in thought. Girls are
agonizing over smudges and stains, trimming and lengthening the edges of their mouths
with lipstick and cosmetic wipes. Red sounds like heels clicking on ballroom floors and
fairytale dresses rustling in crowded rooms. It sounds like the skin of an apple shredded
between teeth, and the tinkling of Salvation Army bells along strip malls in the winter.

This is a poem I write in my head in the hospital, when red is too close. I see it in
stripes around inpatients arms, in grease blooming through my napkin at dinner, splotchy
on my face when I look in the mirror. I feel it in my cheeks in the bathroom, my pants
pooling around my ankles, the lady in scrubs watching me through a transparent curtain.
Wishing shed look anywhere else, I start fidgeting, tapping my foot against the white
tiles. She clears her throat.

There is red in the spine of the book Im not really reading in the library of the
treatment center. Im not really reading it because a scrub lady (one of many) is
scrutinizing me for signs of Prohibited Behavior. I dont tap my fingers, I dont drum my
feet, I dont shift in my chair, even though my feet are buzzing from being locked in an
eternal criss-cross-applesauce.
The nutritionist has coiled red hair like copper wire. Every day she leads me into
her office, and I slice my fingers on the sharp edges of the food diary worksheets and
meal plans she piles into my hands. Protein, carb, vegetable, fruit. Pictures of shiny
apples and plump cherry tomatoes, flesh oozing through taut red skins. Red peppers and
red meat and bruise-colored eggplants dancing on diagrams, gardens growing in my
stomach.
Sitting at the table, cornered by two scrub ladies, oil runs down my arm and
leaves a red stain. The other ED patient, a fragile, bird-like girl, with wings poking
through the back of her shirt, blinks at me though red eyes. We both stare at our trays, and
then at each other, and then at the invisible oil stains that only we can see. The scrub
ladies are wearing lipstick.
Red is the color here, in mouths, on napkins, in my blushing cheeks when the
scrub lady sits on her stool outside the bathroom, politely averting her eyes.

Yellow sounds like flip-flops slapping against hot sidewalks. It feels light and
slippery like water splashed on sweaty faces, and the ruffling of cotton summer dresses
being pulled from racks. It smells like lemons, sunscreen, and beach linen strung up to
dry with wooden clothespins, salty sleeves and fabric damp from the ocean. It looks like

running limbs and sandals with the heels peeling off, grass stains on denim and sunbleached hair peppered with sand. It looks like freckles and caramel tans. It feels soft
between your fingers like dandelion fluff, there one second and gone the next. It shoots
into your mouth through fat plastic straws, sweet and acidic. Its sponged clean from the
clouds at night, then cooks on horizon lines, an egg cracked in the sky.

Times up, says the scrub lady, extending her hand. I hand over my notebook,
and my black fountain pen. Im not allowed to keep it in case I feel like poking holes in
my wrists in the middle of the night. Or in case another patient sneaks into my room and
steals it. I dont know what anyone would do with a spiral notebook, but I give it up
anyway.
Ive been writing about the pretty parts of yellow, reminding myself that its not
poison. Its another assignment. Two years ago, when I was diagnosed, yellow became
one of my forbidden thoughts, along with the letter M, dirt, grease, and most edible
things. Yellow meant rotted teeth, butter stains, the rounded humps of the McDonalds M
towering in the sky. Yellow was the stuff caked under my fingernails, the fried smell in
mall food courts, the tinge of my skin when I looked in the mirror. It was dimmed
sunlight, tinted gray behind the windows of the treatment center, bouncing off the glass.
What did you write about? the scrub lady asks me, tucking a wisp of hair
behind her ear. As if she cant just read my notebook, which shes holding tight against
her chest like its her very own.
A color, I say, standing on a square of sunlight reflecting on a floor tile. Yellow
feels cold under my feet.

The scrub lady purses her lips, as if deep in thought. Then she smiles, because
thats what people do when theyre confused and dont know what to say.

Blue is a headache and plucked strings of a guitar. It strums lazy rhythms in your
thoughts as your body wobbles, resurfacing from sleep, spaghetti limbs and Jell-O bones.
Its a sore-cheek yawn and the cold air snapped across your legs when you rip off the
covers before the sun comes up. It tastes like iced coffee and peppermint gum, working
your jaw, easing your muscles awake. But its also a soporific, lavender scent oil and
counting sheep, hypnotism to the brain. Its thick and scabby like a bruise, ringing deep
beneath your skin like a massage. Its an exfoliant, scrubbing your skin tender and soft.
Blue is ice cubes, aromatherapy, a love song. Its the tangle of veins inside frail arms, a
map of lifelong wishes, lifelong hurts.

On the car ride home, I have my notebook back, and Im writing everything I
want to feel but dont. Treatment wasnt lavender scent oil or hypnotism to my brain. It
wasnt exfoliating, it didnt take the edge off, it didnt scrub me clean of whatever I was
infected with. It wasnt caffeine but it wasnt a sleeping pill; instead Im sitting in the
passenger seat of my moms red Corolla, half-awake and half-asleep. Were cycling
through Taylor Swift albums, the ones I saved for and scribbled on my Christmas wish
lists when I was nine. They were the first pop albums I ever bought, exclusively mine. I
remember placing them proudly on the checkout counter and digging my favorite Eiffel
Tower wallet from my jean pockets, unwrinkling dollar bills as pink sequins rained on the
floor.

We listen to song after song, not talking much, windows rolled down. I stick my
arms out and dry, hot summer air rushes in. I can think of nothing but the sound of the
guitar and the gray-blue sky, hanging over miles and miles of cornfields. I write down my
last line, and this one feels the least like a cliche, the most real: blue is the color in your
head when youre not thinking about anything.
I cant remember the meal plans with the bleeding tomatoes, or the scrub ladys
lipstick, or the nutritionists hair. I cant see the oil smears on my fingertips; Im not
looking at myself. Instead Im distracted by the cornfields, swaying back and forth in the
wind like a thousand wisps of hair. Yellow on the bottom, blue on the top, our little red
car weaving a crooked path in between.