Monochrome

Poetry

The words “black and white” really had no meaning to him,

at least not in the ways normal people construed them,

and he grew up with a world set in shades of sepia

(or that’s what the eye specialists told him it was,

given that color as a language was incomprehensible to him).

Instead, he revolved his world around the other senses —

the softness of his mother’s curls against his fingers,

the harsh sound of his dad’s cough after a cigarette,

the scents of flowers making an impact when colors couldn’t.

It wasn’t a bad life, growing up in a colorless expanse.

His setback was just another trait he possessed,

and he felt so much more than he saw anyway.

He liked different textures to study most of all,

such as the solidness of the wood his father carved

or the weight of water when he was in a swimming pool.

Though his mother tried to describe colors in photographs,

he would look past the pictures to the window beyond