Poem Beginning with Synesthesia & Ending in a CemeterY

Seth Peterson

I love you in yellow. I mourn you
in little orbs of indigo. From there, 
the options on the color wheel
widen, multiply into the muffled
rooms of a nursing home, walls 
razed where perception ends,
but something still continues.
One room is flamingo pink,
labeled terrified. Or is it

ballet slipper? The lines bleed 
into each other, which 
the optometrist calls astigmatism,
before he says I’m getting old. 
I know the difference
between a P & a D is twelve 
letters & one line that ends 
like a trajectory cut short.
I imagine it’s a way to explain 
the ineffable—seeing gratitude

as chartreuse, red-hot as protected,
lavender as confused—
the streets like a new invention
in Willy Wonka’s corridors.
I am angry & it’s beautiful.
Someone cuts me off & the clouds
are a fistful of roses. I am not 
exaggerating the experience. 

The center of the color wheel
says white is for enlightenment,
the way heaven looks to the unadjusted
pupils. But beneath it is a half-moon 
of black, the exact shade of wet soil
heaped around a coffin. I expect it 
to say torture or hell’s inner circle,

but it says comfortable, & I picture
4 am in the office, opening a book,
gazing down into an umber pool 
of coffee. I picture my father, snoring
through mouthfuls of dirt, insisting 
black is not the color of death, 
it’s the color of resting your eyes.

Seth Peterson is an emerging writer, researcher, and physical therapist in Tucson, Arizona. His poems are in Cincinnati Review, New Ohio Review, Ninth Letter, Only Poems, Rattle, Rhino, and elsewhere. He was recently a finalist for the Ploughshares Emerging Writer Contest, among others, and his work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.