My heart is a cabinet full
of ink bottles.
The warm reds,
the bright yellows,
the listless greys,
the giddy greens.
Life fills them,
the gentle drops of laughter and
the heartbroken tears of defeat
slowly refilling me.
Sometimes
a bottle spills over across a page,
words forming in the smudges of
life’s colors.
Beautiful words,
sad words and glad words,
words so full they fall from my pen
before it touches paper.
I write my story with the ink life gives me,
the lessons learned in pink,
the journeys walked with blue,
the stillness of wintery white.
Life is a rainbow,
light shot through the prism of experience
to bend and twist and form
the colors of a poet’s ink.
My earliest memories of magic in my life had to do with color.
In fifth grade, I was furious with someone for hitting my best friend. I stared at the wall until, suddenly, I realized that I was literally “seeing red”. I imagined it fading to white (the color of the wall), and I calmed myself.
In sixth grade, I was experiencing the first of many hormonally-caused mood swings where I was just melancholy. I imagined what’s written in the poem above: all of my emotions in life are inkwells that get filled by experiences, until they overflow. It’s why, I thought, I didn’t readily laugh; my emotional vial for happiness and laughter was just too big for my life to fill at that time.
In seventh grade, I discovered Wicca. As the child of an agnostic and an atheist, it was a breath of vibrant and colorful fresh air. I found myself in every leaf, in moments spent lying in the tall grass with friends, in raindrops as they ran across the car window. Brilliantly random moments became spiritual, drops of color in a landscape of black and white.
From that early moment in 1999, I found myself not only experiencing vibrance but sharing it as well. I’d drop into people’s lives, leaving behind smudges from the ink on my soul. (I’d like to think I left more beauty and joy than I did anger or sorrow.) There have been moments when someone has expressed what I’ve been to them… the light and glitter they saw when I touched them sometimes has me in awe.
Life is a beautiful, painful, colorful mess.
Color magic is big to me. Colors lure out our emotions, express them when words cannot, and soothe them when our own efforts fail.
The blue of a TARDIS makes me think of Water, of compassion and hope.
The pastels often used in art nouveau speak of Air, of youth and wisdom.
The almost black-and-white landscape of a winter storm shows Earth, the quiet and stillness of rest.
The red spaghetti sauce slopped on my noodles makes me see flames dancing, Fire and the warmth of family, hearth, and home.
Life is magic because it is color, light, and vibrance.
It’s time to set down my quill and focus on life in action. Until next time, I wish you brightest blessings… and a rainbow of experience!
Larissa Lee 