-but in the aching melancholy of it all I look to the ground, as the sun beats down on my neck, and it’s then I see the mint green piles by my feet.
I feel their soft dust between my toes as I inch my bike up the hill. It isn’t the peppy paint in a rotting room or the monochrome I’ve been seeing in my nightmares. It’s mowed grass mixing with straw. It’s bright green meeting soft yellow so faint it’s almost white, like the milky pale of the moon. As the hot wind kicks them up in the air they push themselves together and form a green so soft and inviting, I could swear I’ve seen it in my dreams. I kick it up with my toes and it takes a while coming down, just spinning through the air. I don’t know if it’s the dust or the smell or the sun or the lies I’ve been believing for years but suddenly, I start to cry. I can feel the pinpricks of heat on my eyelids and I move up the hill before my vision can start to blur.
The grass and straw are still coming down by the time I push myself to the top of the hill, and I’m blinking tears out of my eyes against the horizon.  I’m suddenly so very tired, but the tears are still rolling down my cheeks, getting stuck in the crevices in my face, and I know I can’t go home yet.
The sun is shining like a beacon in the sky, burning and brilliant. It’s swimming in an abyss of blue, brighter than any mere color. It surpasses color. It’s beautiful, and I don’t know what took me so long to realize it. 
The sweat pooling at my neck drips down my back, and I can hear the hum of insects like white noise in my ears. I know Greg will be expecting me back soon. I know it’s not over yet, but I want to stay here a little longer. Under an abyss of blue, in a field of mint green, alive by the power of a star so beautiful it extinguishes color, in a world where I exist, where Greg exists- A tired haze overtakes me, and I close my eyes one last time, letting the light over my lids take away the colors crowding my mind. The wind is still kicking up mint green. It flies around my face, and gets stuck in my hair. I open my eyes and run my fingers through it, brushing the pieces of grass and straw to the ground to mix back together, mint green.
Abruptly, I’m a child again, with my storybook of colors, in the soft bright room of my home, I know, because suddenly it’s all real. No questions, no fear, just light and color, consistent and unending, and obscenely beautiful. The sun’s rays kiss my brow, and I’m sure of it.
Yes, I think,
remembering Greg’s butterfly kisses,
and my mother’s stitch work,
blood moons,
and the smell of apricot trees in the wind,
and all the colors that hum in my blood
Yes, I think,

real.