santos scribes

can a color choose you?
stake claim to your heart, your life
the way a lover or a child might?

it’s interesting to think about
that ring of green encircling the brown in your eyes there
who do you suppose chose it?
was it you?
was it green?
was it god?
we’ll never know of course, but i love that we’re talking about it

you probably didn’t have much of a say in the peridot birthstone
truthfully you don’t care for it much either
you feel better suited to an emerald
or prehnite even
you did however choose that four leaf clover that sits at your hip
kelly green and fading still after all these years
what do you suppose you were after back then, the luck or the lineage?

and don’t get me started on the food..
the pale soft feel of butter lettuce
the rich oily unctuousness of a castelvetrano olive
how green bananas are stiff and starched
and green apples, old and sour

and then there is that song lyric
the one you’ve been thinking about since you were 9
‘i’d rather be a forest than a street’
why has this always meant something to you?
is it the idea of a color becoming a living breathing thing that the forest alludes to
or is it you’ve always just had a thing for paul simon?

yes, i think a color can choose you
why else would you have thought to call your business that?
or feel so justified writing in a room whose accents are a muted sage?
and that feeling you get when the first blades of spring start pulling away
from the earth each march- how do you explain that?
no, it isn’t envy you are green with,
it’s the contentment that finds you in each of its decided shades

the word ‘green’ though,
it’s always fallen a little short in my opinion
a gross under-representation of all that the color encapsulates
but what does one call the color of hope and heart, of wealth
prosperity, abundance-
viridescent already taken, i suppose green will have to do.