colours | Janey L Foster

Sit down beside me, here on the floor and bring your palette and your paint.

Take my feet and cover them in sap green so that they merge with the undergrowth, with the things that spread out and take root. So that my toes wriggle in the earth and feel the soil seep in-between them.

Take my legs and cover them in opera rose, let the paint coat my limbs like a small girl’s tights. And she doesn’t care about the luminous colour because she’s bright and loud and free. Colour my legs until they run helter-skelter down the road with no concerns.

Take my abdomen and cover it in alizarin crimson, remind it of when it would flow, when blood signalled life, when it held and it pulsed and became.

Take my breasts and cover them in cerulean, calming and restful, a soothing blue to feed and sustain, to remind them of the nurturing. Paint them and feel oxytocin flood.

Take my face and cover it in brilliant yellow, let it be vibrant and glow so that it lights up the room, so that rays burst out in sunshine.

Take my hair and coat it in orange lake deep so that I look like a punk, so that I look like I used to when my hair was short and spiked, when I wore a zebra print dress and didn’t care.

And my orange hair will spill out across the floorboards in rivulets, ideas and plans and possibilities tumbling out, soaking the wood with unbounded thoughts and dreams.

Take your palette and your gouache and cover all this grey then wash your brush out in my water and sit beside me on the floor.

The mint leaf rested effortless on the hot water’s surface tension, so it had just enough support. And in her morning mug the sky trembled, the trees rippled in their inverted world.

She thought of reflections of the restaurant ceiling, upside down in her wine glass, garnet red and rounded, with its full deep sun warmed taste.

The sun was up in the Now, drying leaves, dropping pale light across her golden browns. But she wasn’t there, she had stood in ancient ruins in the morning and now, back on the coach trip their bellies rumbled from the early start.

Lunch came, with perfect pasta, passing bowls to strangers across a carnival of colours. She drank it all in, at the long wooden table where they sat. She looked right and up to the violet curtains, gold organza fluttering, how they seemed to light up despite the dimness of the candle lit room. And if she took out her small camera she would capture them and have the moment frozen for all time.

But nothing could hold the colours, like jewels against the window and she watched the sunbeams dance amongst the dust as though everything was slowing down. It was as though the moment was calling out to her, look at me, look at me, this is a second to hold. Side by side, in the flickering dim and although her camera could never do justice to the light, she knew her mind would keep it safe. And there they were in that restaurant with high ceilings and wooden walls, sharing food with the strangers of their day.

And later, much later, the fountains and bridges faded to a hush, to a crowded, shoulder to shoulder throng looking up. Quiet, neck-straining to take in the paintings up above and how strange it seems now. That oddness in the thought of rubbing shoulders with no fear, and they stood crammed in together, tasting the air, breathing without masks, without hand gel.

She dropped back to the Now and the day that lay ahead of her but it was tinged, it was softened around the edges like the quality of light. And if she breathed in long and deep she was full, she was lost again to the scent of the Sistine Chapel.