The Cleave of Color

by Nancy Chen Long

(originally published in the 2011 issue of Weave Magazine)

puce. i know that	it’s a little like purple, or similar kind of
color. a little boy once said	dream
it to me	when we get older,
—we were coloring—	our petals blanched
in a field of bluebells	—our ancestors chanting in our memory
under the beam of a chestnut tree:	we are all one, child.
i, who had drawn a cart-wheeling girl,	preferring to be insular,
i didn’t want to color her.	humans graft color with artifice and so
i wanted her to be white.	what is real seems real if some other says it is.
there is no white	washing our imperfections,
silly, the boy said to me.	intellect may say we are vapor, while experience says
but you are	to stay the course, even though nothing can be seen except
white	flecks against a foreboding sky. stay the course,
i said	even if happiness should look like a point, even if
looking at his timberwolf	skin betrays the truth. what can be said about the
eyes and tumbleweed	dispersions of words, chaos and form—they are
shadows. he shook his head. no one is	ad infinitum—
white. i am peach, and	our options being finite, then
you are maize. to prove it,	let us broaden our palette—
he raised the crayon to my skin	in order to honor the original—
and the color disappeared against me.	yes, this is so like a dream. and so
i gasped. he did not know	there is no cold, there is only distance from the sun. change
the rules. let’s race, i said. i’ll race you to	the boundary of
the purple house.	what is considered home,
he said, but	those many rooms in one mansion, spinning,
racing	hurling through space. this picture
makes no sense	—a single stone in a galaxy of stones—
and besides, it’s not	the only thing that matters. the flash of
purple, it’s puce.	form is flesh, the imprint of color.
to prove it, he searched	through archives of memory,
everyplace	where we once danced to some familiar chant
trying to find it.	—still, it hums, ambient, steadfast.