Rosy pink is the colour of my first girlfriend,
who was very kind and would not sleep if I was crying.
She bleached her hair blonde when she moved back to Hawaii.
And I missed her.

When I told my mom I liked girls and I loved this girl,
my mom told me she knew. She always had wondered.
There on the pool chairs, it felt rosy pink.

It was a simple love because it was the first one,
and it was a simple heartbreak.
Lots of tears and a lot of ice cream,
very pre-teen.
It does not stay that way.

Coral blue is the colour of the first girl I had a crush on.
This girl was my best friend,
with chestnut hair and vibrant blue eyes,
and who grew much faster than me,
in all sorts of ways.

When she told me she had kissed a boy,
I thought I was jealous because
I had not kissed a boy yet,
but I felt the tug.

But when I told her I liked her,
she didn’t talk to me for four months.
Then, she told me that this wasn’t the first time.
Apparently there was another.

She let me do her makeup and take pictures of her,
and said that she was okay with it.
She wasn’t,
and I knew when she never was very comfortable talking about it.
And it was all very coral blue.

Silver was the colour of the boys I tried to like
and when I called myself bisexual.
The draw pulled me there,
and I felt very uncomfortable,
but I could not put my finger on it.

Everything seemed fine
when I could talk about boys
with pretty girls with pale eyeshadow
and tight sweaters.
But I never really understood what they meant.

Violet is the colour
of the first girl I fell for
when I called myself “lesbian.”
She was very red,
the essence of autumn,
and she left and I was very confused.
I was young and ignorant.

Green is the colour
of the girl who comforted me
and made empty promises
until I fell.
She was complex,
a labyrinth of stories she doesn’t want to talk about.

Her eyes were this electric yellow-green colour,
the type I paint with,
and she would hug me
and I never felt that way.
We talked into 1am every night
the days before Thanksgiving.

Dark blue is the colour that changed
when I kissed the first girl I fell for
in an elevator,
in an isolated room,
and talked about the woods,
and stained glass windows,
and us.

She told me that she always felt dark blue.
She told me that no one understood what that meant.
I did.
Her words were “piece of s***,”
and “scum of the earth,”
foul things
when everything went wrong.
It was all of our fault.
But she would keep cutting when I had no skin left.
When my blood was pooling around her converse
she kept cutting,
and when I had the advantage,
I did the same.

And even when she still felt dark blue,
she fell in love with her best friend
and smokes cigarettes now.
She wears lipstick that would stain the butts.
I wonder if the smells like ash and smoke.

Yellow was the colour of my summer love
purple-haired who let me sleep on my own,
left my phone undialed,
but wanted to talk about fish and music.
She was something else,
but she cheated.
Probably more than once.

And when she asked me for advice
on how to get an uninterested boy to fall in love with her,
aka, self-help manual on how to break up with your girlfriend,
written by your girlfriend.
I cried for two days,

and realized nothing was as bad as it felt.

Girls hurt more than boys.
Girls cut and kiss and drink and smoke and swear.
Girls lash out,
but girls are softer around the edges.
Girls talk better and listen better
and girls are sanctuary.

Most of the time, at least.
Some girls sew razor blades into their skin
to keep anyone from getting close.
Some girls are violent
some girls keep you hiding
keep you throwing up in the bathroom
from fear of them hurting you.
Some girls that feel dark blue
And some girls that feel green
will follow you to class
and confront you in all the safe spaces you seek.
I like girls,
but sometimes the kindest ones are murderous under the surface.

Some girls don’t have a colour,
because it’s just too soon to say,
or too late to identify how you feel.