Not Pink

By Dorothy Marie

Vivid and vibrant dreams of burgundy silk sheets touched with delicate gold embroidery, of royal blue plush skies speckled with diamonds, of a sighing wind dancing with the supple willows, slink through gray matter and lose themselves at the approach of day. A woman’s eyes blink at the soft gray light shyly peeking through her dreary bedroom curtains, lingering on the rich color and passion they saw in the woman’s dreams. Soon, she rises and with soft, silent steps glides toward the window and brushes back the curtains. There, outside the window, a gray sky morning greets her with a weak smile and frosted foliage. The puffs of wind generated by the lips of light gray clouds seem to whisper to her indiscernible words and vague stories of antiquity.

From afar, the gray of the woman’s hair appears as the generic brush of soft lead over pale white paper; yet upon closer inspection it possesses a spectrum of shades of gray, each strand defining the meditations of her heart. How the dark gray, almost black strands enroot within her soul such deep passions and the dark desire to sin! How the pale gray, almost lily-white strands of her fine hair pierce her heart with innocence and the unadulterated love of a child. Yet, when these shades of gray intertwine, they appear as only Gray, some dull yet venerable color that is neither hot nor cold, but passive and subservient to the orders of brighter colors.

Not all women express their physical selves so simply as gray. But for those who choose that void of brightness and vivacity, their passion finds its compensation elsewhere within themselves. Deep inside the gray matter of her brain, the woman’s ardent desires find their outlet in her dreams; and though it may characterize her exterior, Gray branches into a rainbow of desire as it passes through the prism of her heart. For this Gray that has twined around her, ensconcing her in its softly smothering vines, barricades against the rays of sunshine that may caress the woman’s skin, but cannot block out the light generated by her own heart. Gray only passively perpetuates the mundanity of life, lacking in passion and variance.

Oftentimes, Gray befits the nonchalant mood of a young girl, the moistened pavement she walks upon after a sad autumn rain, the soft and looming clouds that shed their tears upon the earth, or the sweet wafting smoke that moves gently toward the sky. How alien Gray seems as compared to her parents; for the passionate red blazing fire that consumes all life it touches, and the pure life-giving air it copulates with creates this indifferent and simple child, Gray. And every time two extremes mix—love and hate, right and wrong, good and evil—Gray experiences her rebirth and perpetuation.

So, on and on the old gray woman lives, a part of life just as all of life takes part in creating her. Those passions and desires she holds within her heart muddle inside of her and seep through to her outside in a smooth coating of gray. She cannot disperse them, for they aided in her creation and are therefore innate qualities and defining characteristics of her soul. And because such bright colors created her, the old woman humbly submits to their orders, passively flowing with the current caused by their emotive sway. Forever she exists—ancient, soft, graceful, indifferent, mundane, and Gray.

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