Prism

       Today her favorite color was red. She wore red mittens and a red carnation in her hair. He found red on her wrists when he peeled off her sweater. She cried and said the scars were old but seemed to be badges she could never live down. He said he was sorry and didn't mention them again. They collected red fallen leaves and pinned them down inside the pages of a red spined encyclopedia.

       On the first day of Spring her favorite color was green because he could finally tackle and pin her down, laughing, in the long green grass. She found green bugs and caterpillars and placed them in jars with green lids. He argued the lightening bugs glowed more yellow than green. She pouted until he conceded he could be wrong. Neither was proven right because lightening bugs don't glow in glass walls. But she found the green in his eyes while causing green grass stains on denim knees and cotton elbows.

        When her favorite color was purple she had a lavender sun dress and a straw hat with a periwinkle ribbon to prove it. But she said it was too hot to venture further than the porch. So she grew purple flowers in window boxes and read The Hobbit bound in dark purple leather. Every evening he coaxed her from the porch to the old tire swing in the backyard. There they watched the sunset, her current favorite color in brush strokes across the sky while he pushed her and she pretended she could fly.

        Blue, specifically the washed out blue in the very center of the flames of the fireplace, became her favorite color. It was a long winter that year. She bought a blue tea set and poured boiling water out of the tea pot into blue mugs with hot chocolate mix already in them. She didn't want to celebrate Christmas because she cared for neither red nor green. He wrapped all gifts in paper the color of robin's eggs. When digital clocks turned eleven-eleven she stared out the windows and wished for bluebirds to come and sing. He sat next to her wearing blue bunny slippers and didn't wish for a thing.

       She could never finish doing laundry when her favorite color was white. She spilled coffee on her white skirt, grape jam on her white blouse, wine on her white dress and mud on her white shoes. Her response was an embarrassed laugh, a pink flush on pale white skin, innocent insistence that she wasn't clumsy but that white was cursed. He got flustered for her, yelling and complaining and rubbing his temples. But he loved when all her clothes were dirty, and she wandered the house in his white button up shirt, unbutton in front so he could see her white bra playing peek-a-boo. And when she bent down to pull the clothes out the dryer, she flashed a little cheek and her white lace panties. When she found out about the other woman she cried and cried and cried. He apologized and said he knew it was wrong but since nothing had really happened it was just a white lie and wasn't that her favorite color? The argument ended with his suitcases in the car. His last words were that white was a horrible favorite color, it stained too easily. She answered that, rather, it was a blank canvas for life to paint as it saw fit. A season later she threw a white gold wedding band into dirty brown bayou.

        She had no favorite color after she met a man who refused to tell her his. He said she should stop reflecting others and find her own and to this end his color was his secret. After a time he asked her if she found hers she nodded solemnly. She said she had no favorite color. In the absence of color she had learned to refract them all and throw out into the world around her. He smiled when she said this and told her that his favorite color was sunlight because it was what shone through her and caused her to set the world aglow.