Black and White

I didn’t suddenly
wake up one morning to
Black and White.
The colors slowly
slipped away,
Orange juice through my fingers
as I was left with
only
the pulp.

When I colored the
grass
Purple,
they told me it couldn’t be.
When I wanted to color your
skin
Pink,
they told me it couldn’t be.

Then I fell off the balance beam
in the playground
and a bruise
blossomed
like the sunset
on my leg;
those colors
washed away,
too.

I was seven when my grandmother died;
the colors
of her quilts left
with her,
too.
It was then that I realized:
words
couldn’t be as
simple
as my colors,
either
as I watched
my mother’s rainbow of
tears
and heard the
simple
words she told me:
“I miss her so much.”

And when my grandfather died
on a
snowy day,
as I listened to the
words
of Kaddish,
I was afraid I’d
lose the
White,
too.