Enthralled, Michael Moreth. 

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ROYGBIV

Shauna Friesen

R
Today we eat maraschino cherries.
            Today we wear waxy lipstick and suck cinnamon bark.
            Today I am dressed for a bullfight, plugging lava lamps into every outlet, breaking dyed mercury out of a thermometer. Ladybugs click at hospital windows like fingernails after I unscrew the lid on a jelly-jar full of them. You laugh when they traverse your onion-thin skin.
            “What is this?”
            “Red,” I tell you, opening my mouth wide enough for you to see tongue and gums, and what a color it is to begin with.
            The color of afterbirth. Sin. A dying sun.
            Blood pearls like a butterfly egg on my pricked fingertip and I let you taste the iron. Your smile is all gold fillings and sugar rot. Your eyes are dipped in ceramic glaze. Your voice is a foreign croak. “Is it really you, Ruthie?”
            “It’s me, Mom.”
            “You look different.”
            “I know. It’s been a long time.”
 
O
Today we stare at the sun through cola glass.
            Today we wear life preservers and plunge our hands into marmalade, squelching it in our fists.
            Today we petal-pluck marigolds.
            “This is orange.”
            There is a smooth oval of amber in your palm, a lacewing smothered in its honey crypt.
            A pet shop goldfish goes belly-up on the end table.
            A nurse catches me in the hallway after. “Not long. Maybe a week or two now. I’m so glad you’re here to keep her company.”
 
Y
Today we are byzantine icons by filament glow, our faces gold-leafed and our arms stuck with adhesive gems.
            “Why are we doing this?”
            “You couldn’t remember the names of the colors. Which was which,” I remind you, and we scrub clean with sulfur soap and sea sponge after. “Today is yellow.”
            It is the piss in your bedpan and pus in your pressure sores. It is molars and eyeballs over-marinated in their sockets, and I hold up a mirror so you can see your jaundiced sclera.
            “You’re not Ruthie.”
            “You just haven’t seen me in a while, Mom.”
            “Where have you been?”
            “I was angry with you. I still am. But I should have been here. I should have come sooner.”
            We crack eggs between our palms, wrists running with yolk.
            We braid our hair with caution ribbon.
            We suck lemon wedges, our grins triangles of rind.
            When you vomit neon bile into your lap, I start crying.
            “I’m so sorry, Mom. Why didn’t I come sooner?”
 
G
Today nurses help me wheel you to the garden. Sunlight lances leaf and lichen of a live oak so together we are quarter emerald, drip-drop peridot, marrow-drenched in green.
            “So much,” you say, a clover reflected in the milk glass of your eyes. “Too much. This one must be God’s favorite.”
            The color of envy. Poison. Fruits picked too soon. Mold on bread, and I’ve left a loaf under my sink for weeks so it feels like velveteen pressed to our cheeks.
            “I’m tired. I want to sleep,” you murmur.
            I have underripe tomatoes to show you, small and hard as marbles. An iridescent beetle on a safety pin. I’ve grown you a crystal from borax and food dye. “Just a little longer?”
            “Please. Let me sleep.”
 
B
Today I hammer sharps on a glockenspiel while you snore.
            I curl beside you and trace the veins at the insides of your elbows. I drink hospital skim milk, and it feels its way down my throat like a cold holy ghost.
            “Ruthie!” you shout when you wake, and I kiss your turquoise ring. “Where is she? Where’s Ruthie?”
            “I’m right here.”
            “Ruthie has blue eyes.”
            I look away. “You’re remembering wrong. You’re sick, Mom.”
            “Where is she? Where’s Ruthie? Why isn’t she here? Why won’t she come?”
            This is bluer than blue.
            You scream it over and over until you’ve fallen out of bed.
 
I
Today your skin is indigo where you’ve fractured your ribs.
            Today ink bleeds from a pen when I write my name at the lobby desk, M-A-R-A and my prints are dyed ultramarine.
            I stay with you until the sky hemorrhages near-navy, and you are barely breathing. Death is periwinkling your lips.
            “I don’t know if you can hear me. I’m so sorry, Mom. I’m sorry I waited until it was too late.”
 
V
Today I bring violets to your funeral. I tuck amethysts and sea stars into folds of a coffin’s lavender satin. I trace the liver spots island-chained     in purple over your clasped knuckles. The embalmer has painted your lips magenta and your fingernails a royal plum.
            “How did you know her?” a mourner asks.
            “I didn’t,” I say. “She just reminded me of someone.”
            “Who?”
            “Someone I never said goodbye to.”

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Shauna Friesen (she/her) is a mountain climber, rock collector, and writer living in Los Angeles, California. Her words have been featured in Gone Lawn, Pithead Chapel, Chestnut Review, Foglifter Journal, and Flash Fiction Magazine, among others. 
Twitter/X: @friesenwrites
Instagram: @shaunaexplore