I imagine my fears spinning around a color spectrum in a broken world. The stronger the fear, the closer I come to anger, to violence. I land now on a blue wall of silence.

Towering shadows of policemen leave a metallic taste on my tongue.
Dostoyevsky said that the degree of civilization in a society can be judged by its prisons. Police injustice, gunmetal gray, holds a mirror to who we are. It is Zoom funerals without hugs or flowers.
A lack of closure.

I repeat new phrases: social distance, you are on mute, and choke hold. How many times can we bear to hear I can’t breathe?

A cobalt blue glass-shard to the eye causes a blood clot to the brain.
Streets and forests bleed fire.
A president tweets vitriol.
For seven minutes and forty-six seconds a white knee presses on a black throat.

My beautiful friend hallucinated, unable to catch his breath in some indigo liminal space. It turned out to be cancer, not Covid. It turned out to be death.

I feel a surge of fear-twinged anger at the sight of an unmasked woman in the cereal aisle.

Crumpling like paper, turquoise worries are over things that haven’t happened.
Yet.
My eldest son, who broke his femur bone at eighteen-months, practices pills and pot in Brooklyn, a blister of pandemic germs.
Out of reach. In harm’s way.

The loss of currency is dull, toxic green.
The caged bird trapped in a block of ice.
A grown man tackled to the ground.
Poverty, like sickness, can lead to urine leaks, hearing loss, tooth decay.

Dusty sunrays slant through a window to prematurely age a peach.
Orange is a room with a low ceiling, the feeling of being watched, the clairvoyant auntie in a rocker, eerily quiet.

Luminescent yellow is the hope for a reboot.
The thermometer, rubbing alcohol, and hand sanitizer.
Marching in protests, taking a knee.
Feeling tender towards the lived-in t-shirt.
The mic, unmuted.

Like the repair of a bone, rose-pink is civilized.
An ancient healed femur bone reveals humans have helped each other. No other creature survives a broken leg long enough to heal.
If civilization starts there, haven’t we at least begun?

Scarlet is the creation of things that no one has asked for, tiny zines, collages, and action figures glued to the mailbox, like little prayers.
My hand smoothing a crumpled paper so I can start over. An opening.