Colors

Black: the color of life to come. Bleakness.

White: the color of numbing, agonizing, torturous pain. And noise. Noise to drown out the pain.

Grey: the color of her skin when I saw her at the morgue.

Red: the color of the boiling rage at having my daughter raped and then killed mercilessly.

Yellow: the color of daffodils and daisies and sunshine and her hair conditioner.

Orange: the color of paperwork. Files and folders to be buried and lost. And stained staircases of police stations and court houses.

Brown: the color of my ineffectualness against the ‘system.’ All washed up and dried inside. My pathetic efforts to get justice for my daughter. Dried blood. On my hands.

Green: the color of the last dress she wore. Stained with red—lots of it. Bought by me on her sixteenth birthday last month.

Blue: the color of the sky on the day she was raped. The sky on the day she was killed. The sky on the day the perpetrator of that heinous crime went home. Scot free. The color of the bloody sky always and forever.

Pink: the color of ‘his’ shirt the day I followed him in his brand new Beetle.

Purple: the color of the shadows in the police station when I was arrested on a murder charge.