From my 14th year I carry memories of change.  It brought me more beginnings and endings than all of my other years combined.  But most of all from that year I carry colors.

A golden retriever rests her head on my lap.  Ironically, her eyes are the most human I've ever seen. Eyes across the room search mine for the same humanity. But all I can see is the sunlight illuminating fallen clumps of her dull golden fur and a pink tongue spilling out of a slack-jawed mouth.

Dad’s eyes the petrified drips with a sigh and tries to chip the imperfections off with his fingernail.  My room is pink.  The kind of pink that hurts your eyes.  Dad thinks it’s overwhelming.  But I think it’s perfect.  Between these four walls I don't see the water stained hardwood and tacky doorknobs.  Here I wear rose goggles that disguise the careless drips and dirt that wouldn't come off of the windows no matter hard I scrubbed.  I didn't create a headache, I created the sun.  A strawberry milkshake canvas that I can paint with Taylor Swift posters.  The kind of bright the black could never take away.  

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  
He told me I would get used to the black.  I'm not so sure. At home the night sky is a burnt orange colored by factory fumes.  But the ocean sky is a pool of ink, dotted with stars that never have white wings or a pilot.  Here the ocean mimics the sky.  We can fly instead of float.  We see doors in every corner whose emptiness is covered by the dark and pretend our deck chairs are made of rose gold instead of plastic.  We can travel into the next world where we offer music to the sky instead of smoke.

I want to cover up bare skin with golden patches and cry when I can’t make anything better.  I want to splatter pink paint on the floor of every room I see just so I can make it perfect.  I want every ship to sail where the black erases the horizon.

When I open my eyes I want to see more than gray.