Chromatic Divide

Color Theory

0411.2025

There are kinds of color.

Some go quietly—

sink in water,

drown in the painter’s grief,

brushed on to summon

love or shame or longing.

But others—

others are fugitives.

They vault the borderlines,

bleed through the page,

burn to get out.

Some mingle.

Fuse.

Grow gorgeous in rebellion—

despite the purists,

who hiss that mixing

is filth.

Contamination.

Some crust over—

unusable.

Others are branded:

too loud, too dark,

too melancholic to frame.

Not fit

(for what?)

the purists murmur—

to the others,

to the makers,

to themselves—

trying to stay clean.

But I keep stirring.

Even when they blister.

Even when the canvas recoils.

Because the color that runs

is the only one

that breathes.

m.c.f.