On Undressing a Color / On Undressing a Girl
by Fransivan MacKenzie
Blue, stripped out of itself, must be dirty white. Or an endless strip of black. Or flaming red. Or vibrant yellow. I do not know. I never tried. I imagine that undressing a color, though, would be so much like peeling a memory away from the grey and the white matter of your brain. The act of liquefying what we believe should remain intact, but just wouldn’t. When I was eight, a boy undressed me in a realm housed of cemented cerulean. I remember thinking of a cloudless sky. I remember its hues reflecting the starved mouth of swimming pools in mid-July, the ones I dove into, believing that the ocean was just a minute of held breaths away. Ten years later, I will sit across from someone in a place of blue walls. She will be in a white coat, promising to help me walk out of that godforsaken room even a decade later. And I will remember. And I, like an appendage in the presence of a steak knife, will dissolve into a puddle. And I, like a girl in those pools, will sink trying to blow up her mouth and not leak anything out of it. And I, like all those walls did not, will collapse until the floor is an ashtray. She will wonder as I sit there trying to catch my breath what is it that’s setting my bones on fire. And I will not tell her anything. Just as I was once told as a child. And the blue walls will be there, watching the entire time. If I close my eyes hard enough, I will hear them laugh.
