You wear all black, eyes lined in Kohl. Even your hair is dyed black, so dark it swallows the light. But your color is red.

You use biting words to spite me, coloring your sarcasm with blue words.

Your green eyes the color of freshly mowed grass. As green as your secret hopes.

Your favorite lipstick a deep shade of purple. Stark against the untouched porcelain of your skin. “It’s called Purple Rain,” you say to me, smirking at my disgust.

Your cheeks are sometimes (more rarely now, true) suffused with the pinks of your sudden raptures. Even your giggles are pink.

You step boldly into the rainbow of your adolescence, shattering misconceptions with every move you make. I know you are experimenting like a child does with watercolors, trying first this shade then that. But I can only wait for you to open your eyes and realize that your color is red. The true shade of your hair, disguised beneath this rebellious, raven black. The hidden fires of your heart, clutched in the closed fist of your insecurity.