It’s a blur of red and song of tan,
the brush sweeping over my childhood like a broom of despair trying to make it disappear.
          Bibbidi- bobbidi- boo!
Paint fumes filling the room and burning into my mind,
Faster,
        Paint faster.
All sound of purple fades,
Its light and airiness,
Soft and tenderness.
A lullaby in the walls.
Deepening the color with every coat, the teen in me is set on the dark red anguishing the child inside.

The red drips like blood from a wound into the carpet.
                        Drip…
                                  Drip…
                                             Drip…
It can’t be undone.
Faster,
        faster.
Before I change my mind.
Faster,
        Paint faster.
Before I regret every layer in front.
S
    L
        O
            W
                 L
                     Y
- What if it’s too soon for change?

Maybe I made the wrong choice.
Maybe red is too dark.
Maybe it looks too much like a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich.

In the corner is 9-year-old me,
Screaming and throwing the paint, resisting the degradation of the past.
Now I’m bawling on the bed,
tears wetting the quilt, wetting my cheek,
because the rest of my room is filled with
the essence of something I never wanted to become-
                                                                                 older.

Walking out of a Neverland I thought impossible to leave.
It’s all just a memory trying to squirm  away into nothingness,
like it never mattered anyway,
like it was all something to be forgotten anyway,
like I forgot to remember what little me insisted anyway…

Starting to fear everything that is to come,
         College,
                    Leaving,
                               Death.

Thinking about my newly red walls,

Missing the lavender ones absorbing the sun and reminding me
Of earlier days.
With crayons,
With simplicity.

Because for me, it’s not just a color,

It’s my future.