One day long ago
(The forty-third day
of 1998, precisely)
I was asked to explain
my essence by color.
Immediately I knew…
I was gray, neither black
nor white, but gray, safe.
Somber, solemn, resting,
monotone gray.
I moved in slow motion,
unseen, unseeing, unseeking.
What was background, static,
stable was best.
What was moving, growing,
striving was to be disdained.
Neither death nor life,
neither breath nor coldness,
I remained, unchanged, unchanging,
unnoticed. I was safe.
“Wow!” I wrote. “Gray is safe?
That’s what I mean. That’s what I feel.”
I wanted to be something different,
something anything-but-gray.
I knew the word puce
though I looked for puese.
And I chose to be puce, experimenting
with pen colors, typing in puce,
getting puce nail polish and lipstick,
looking for puce clothes…
It has taken years, and my company
Silver Boomer Books went along with me
with puce as a logo color, our color.
I don’t know that I’ve achieved puce
but I know I left gray in the dust!