The Telling Rooms Movement I
The Happiest Color
The Happiest Color
Aubrey Duplissie
It was the jacket
That defended the boy
From cascading rain, while
Mother observed from foggy windows
It coated the bus
He rode for the first time
While his parents watched,
Hand in hand
It was there on sweltering summer days,
Within his lemonade stand,
And staining his mother’s hands
From hours of squeezing
Then it was the fish
In the aquarium,
But he focused on a girl,
And it was her hair too
It was the diamond danger sign
His car skidded past,
The wheels screeching
As they fought to stay on course
It was the color left,
Scratched onto the guardrail
When it split in two
And his car went tumbling down
When his mother learned
She was sitting in a room
Of that color
And it filled her vision
It tortured her with memories
Of a boy she once had
As her stomach turned
And terrible words filled her ears
But then-
It was the dappled leaves,
Falling from the heavens
Exactly one year later
It was his favorite color
That now graced the earth
And suddenly,
She didn’t know how to feel