Pink Ochre Magazine

             “Blue,” he said, “I want to know.”
              Our feet dangled off the edge, jeans rolled up to our knees to avoid the insolent waves
lapping at the supports, flecks of ash floating in the turgid land breeze, ripped away from the lit
cigarette rolling between us on the damp wood.
              I frowned at the ocean reflecting the inky sky.
              “You wanna know what blue looks like?” I asked, glancing sideways at the distant
lighthouse beams reflected in his milky eyes. “Why?”
              “She said her favourite colour is blue.”
               I held back a sigh. She. Her. Always her.
              “You’re, like, obsessed with her,” I joked. “She’s not that great.”
              “She’s beautiful.” The corners of his mouth lifted. He’d never seen her – the version of
her face he knew was one he’d had people describe to him. He’d only ever heard her talk, only
ever smelled her shampoo, only ever felt her hands, her waist, her lips. And yet.
              The embers flickered on the cigarette between us. “Okay,” I conceded. “Blue. That’s a
cold colour. Frigid. It’s close to black, but colder. It’s like the aftertaste of a violent emotion. Or
the emptiness that follows something brutal, like trauma, like grief, like death.”
              His hand jerked over the cigarette.
              I winced. I shouldn’t have said that.
             “Sorry.”
             “Death,” he repeated, morosely. “I remember it as a bright light. The kind that precedes
an explosion. You remember? Lightning before thunder?”
              I did. Another evening, another half an hour spent on describing lightning to him.
              “Maybe I’m just remembering the headlights,” he continued, lower, but with an
unaffected quality that signalled he was inching closer to the end of this mood, “They were …
blinding.”
               A chuckle, smile lines creasing an otherwise polished, seaglass face.
               The asshole.
               I reached for his hand but grabbed the cigarette instead.
             “Blue is the shade of a goodbye kiss,” I continued, wanting, but unable to stop. “Blue is when someone tells you they can’t love you – can’t love what you are. Blue is a sunset you
watch all alone in your childhood bedroom. Blue is a sad colour.”
              Our hands brushed and I stilled momentarily before realising he’d only reached for the
cigarette, which I surrendered without conscious thought. The smoke he blew was as white as his eyes. It floated around us, blurring against the low-hanging clouds.
              His eyes followed the gurgle of the receding wave, the lit tip dangerously close to the
back of his hand.
              “If it’s sad, why would it be her favourite colour?” he mused.
               I forced my shoulders into a noncommittal shrug, a gesture performed for myself and
myself alone. “Blue’s also a cool colour, y’know? Gentle touch on a warm evening, first smile of a new friend, a million tiny flowers blooming together. The happy-go-lucky stuff.” I paused. “It’s the colour of a summer sky.”
               He tilted his head. “Summer sky? You said that’s white.”
              “Well, it’s white to you.”
              “Everything’s white to me.” He smirked – an indulgent, careless, heartless curve of his
mouth. “What’s blue to you?”
            I weighed the words, letting them turn around my head like stones tumbling in a ruthless tide.
                 There was only one answer to it. There had only ever been one answer to it.
                 “Lonely,” I whispered, biting a smile.
                 “So dramatic,” he teased, before pulling the cigarette back to his lips.
              It flared bright as he took a drag and I didn’t know how to tell him that his hair looked blue in the night, that his jeans were blue, that our hands were blue, that my tears were blue, that the time he said he wished he wasn’t blind, just to see her once, his breath was blue.
                 That when he smiles, the world is pink, but when it’s for her, it all turns blue.

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