I know solely the dress I wear
Not an awareness for compassion or violence
Not a care for morality or ignorance
Not an ounce of remorse or regret

I feel only feelings of silk
The only textures in my life are the cheap intricacies of lace that are about as sophisticated as a vanilla wafer
I dream with the anticipation that something will change
Yet I live with the burden that nothing will happen

To me, color is happiness
To me, happiness is but a word in the dictionary
To me, a dictionary dictates any ounce of feeling in my life
To me, life is colorless and dull

But that moment of color
That moment when I spot a faint glimmer in the corner of my prison cell
That moment I feel I know for the first time what the words I’m reading mean
Is the moment the noun emerges from the page and dances in front of my eyes

The reds
The deep reds
The perpetually gleaming reds
The obnoxious, yet timid reds
The flamboyantly subtle reds
The fire in the humbleness of the reds
The unnerving satisfaction
The morbid pleasure

Is feeling
Color
And real language that tingles on my tongue when I dare to speak of it

So, it must be happiness?

The reflection of the Apple
A multifaceted diamond refracting wisps of color into the lard - like stillness of the room
A sudden ray of sunlight to melt the castle of ice and hate created in the darkest winter
Overwhelmed my body with feeling, color, and words

All of the futilities in life
The silk dresses and dictionaries
The war that was fought by one in confinement
The overwhelming struggle of doing nothing at all
Were being melted away into an oozing ocean of feeling

It was a witchy volcanic cauldron of red
Attention - grabbing
Mind bending
Red

So, it must be happiness?

I reached into the pool of magma
And the shadow of my hand loomed on the shiny surface of the apple, the color fading.
I grabbed it and squeezed it firmly, the juice bubbling and foaming on my coarse hands

The color didn’t run off
Yet it seeped into my bloodstream and made me cackle wickedly, hurling the ball of egotistical, spectacular red towards my mouth

So, it must be happiness?

The roof of my mouth was peeling on the inside -
my teeth plagued by plaque and decaying as fast as I found the color in the first place
I gathered a rather paltry amount of saliva and tried to force a swallow, sending pieces of apple and soul into the acidic volcano of my stomach.

I lurched into a pit of boiling magma
The walls of the chamber laughing
Taunting me with their confinement
Moving in, trying to phase me

And to think - I trusted red!
The attitude, the depth!
The apple, the happiness!
The lava
The blood

I crippled into a shredded snakeskin-like carcass of the former self I didn’t have
The hollow shell of a girl who I never was.
Because I was a vessel for life, but I never lived.
So the vessel remains not even a vessel, merely waste.
Wasted matter.

There were 25 other letters in the alphabet, and thousands of words in the dictionary.
Pain
Agony
Intolerability
Neglect
And I chose happiness

But not all letters together make the words you’re trying to say
Not all feelings are happiness
Not all colors are red
Not all people are good
Not all kingdoms stay together
Not all relationships last
Not all people look like the selfish “vessels” or “wasted matter” they are
Not all apples taste the way they look

Which after the only “life” I ever lived to experience
Turned me red.