Obfuscation

You never asked-
but I like the cool honesty
that the steel blue fractured light
throws against the walls of an empty room.

Your preference of warmth
makes me flush,
a bit hot
and rash.

As you know,
astrophysicists and amateur astronomers
use both spectrums
to learn about light
and discover new worlds
neither real blue nor red.

Me-I liked to walk in the woods in the dark
just to see or feel
my way.

I also rested in my closed
toy chest, inside the closet
with the bones and Barbie heads,
with my eyes closed tight-
yet could still see red.

You see,
I find
the absence of light briskly
more welcoming to me,
but it is just tepid white to you
I thought.

Painting By Abbott Handerson Thayer (Princeton University Art Museum) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Deep breathing lessons

In a fit of (out)rage-

directed at self-

via repeat rejections

and the subsequent dejection

received-

I could only see (in the) red.

The message was loud and clear, I fear

they all might be right and

I almost entertained

a harebrained

nasty notion, deranged desperate thought

that I could spend my days in drudgery

earning regular poor money

working for someone else’s benefit(s)-

Then I remembered 

that doesn’t work-for me

though it would make some others

(beyond) happy-it'd be

at my expense,hence,  I’d be in debt, 

lacking value, 

inherently strangled spiritually.

And after a moment of light

reflection-

I can now breathe

asymptomatically.

Image of painting by Frederick Sandys, Love's shadow, 1867 [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.