colours

colours

—photoset by ally

blue body, my friend

you've been here since the beginning

and you will be at the end

blue body, my dear

you've done so well

yet i can't believe you're here

blue body, my love

you've worked hard for me

sent from one above

blue body, my heart

you've become all i need

what are you but art?

blue body, my grudge

who am i to judge?

blue body, whom i did not create

there isn't much point of

nothing but hate

blue body, by kayla

the red moon heralds

a time of two-faced good

what, perhaps

was meant to be love

was shaken

then forsaken

and tore what was eternal

in two

now i sit alone

in the dimly lit room

hoping

the tears will not reflect

the red moon’s warning

—red moon, by kayla

Red feels like heat. Seven years old, sprinting across your street in pursuit of your little sister, your bare feet moving as fast as they can to keep the hot asphalt from burning into your heels. Panting, chest heaving, you stop, hunch over with your hands on your knees, cheeks pink and hair tangled in your face. Red feels like squealing with excitement when you hear the ice cream truck cruising down the next street over. Red feels like sitting with your best friend on the curb outside your house, laughing so uncontrollably that you tip over onto each other, which only causes you to laugh harder. Red feels like childlike excitement, like energy.

Orange feels like freedom. Standing in the front of an expansive field of flowers that seem to go on for miles, wind brushing your hair into your face and causing the sunflowers to collide into each other. Orange feels like the end of a hike, standing atop a lookout in awe of how far you’ve climbed, existing above the clouds and feeling like you belong up in the sky. Or driving home after a long day of adventuring with the windows down and the music drifting out into the open air. Resting your hand on the edge of the window, letting your fingers dance through the breeze. Seeing the sunset slowly peek above the trees and up into the atmosphere. Orange feels like contentment, lightness of being.

Yellow feels like sunbeams warming and melting the frost that’s covered the blades of grass all winter. When the air has been cold for months and months and you never thought it would warm again, but it does. When you have been sad for months and months and you never thought you would feel happiness again, but you do. Yellow is in the unrestrained laugh of a child, in the smile that your best friend gets when they see you. In the clear skies the morning after a thunderstorm. In inherent goodness and hearts only intending to love. Unconditional gratitude for living to see another day on this beautiful earth. Finding significance in the simplest of moments. Yellow is radiant, authentic joy.

Green feels like the first step outside into the open air after being inside for a whole day. You stop and you breathe in deep, and exhaling slowly. Green feels like grounding yourself in a moment of chaos. You feel your feet underneath you, rock back and forth a few times, and steady yourself again. Green is stretching your limbs after a long day. Rolling your shoulders, fixing your posture. Feeling a little more awake, a little more alive, a little more present. Like a sip of ice water. Green feels refreshing, like renewal.

Blue feels like clarity. Sleeping in for the first time in forever, then blasting your favorite song as you get ready for the day. Clean sheets and the smell of fabric softener. Laying on the floor of your dimly lit room with your best friend, talking about life and about true happiness and what it really means to live. Blue feels like the realization that you’re an entirely different person than you were last year, but realizing that it’s a good kind of different. Finding your purpose and your passions and sinking into your true self. Taking care of your soul and resting when you need it. Blue is brightness, soft smiles, and still waters.

Violet feels like home. The first embrace with your mom after not seeing her for three months. Laughs with your little brother during your first coffee run in a while. Watching a movie on the couch under a fluffy blanket with your dad. Family dinners at the end of a hectic day with home cooking and your dog sitting at your feet. Violet is sleeping in the comfort of your own bed again, with moonlight seeping through your curtains and forming shadows on your wall. Glancing through your window up at the stars and constellations, illuminating the black sky, as dark and thick as molasses. Violet feels like safety, and ease of existence.

Life feels like color. Spinning and swirling in an array of vivid shades and tones, every memory ingrained in your mind like a motion picture that, no matter how many times you’ve watched it, you find something new to love each time. Soaking in every moment with awe and wonder. Constantly captivated by the fullness of living.

Life feels like a rainbow.

—a rainbow, by helena

Aimlessly wandering back and forth across the street,

he glanced all around, to the sky, then to his feet.

In one sudden movement, to the streetlights’ surprise,

the kitten flopped down; now, on the asphalt he lies.

Though the coziest bed may not be a pile of leaves,

he seems to enjoy the crunch as he turns in his sleep.

Yet another brisk night, the streetlights did hear

loud laughs from three teenagers, even before they appeared.

They then turned the corner, and carried by each

were bags of McDonald’s — enough for a feast.

The three, smiling and chatting, stopped right in their tracks,

and down below the streetlight, they ate. And they sat

on that cold curb for longer than expected,

for it was rather chilly- but the food had them distracted.

While they woke the poor streetlights, it was quite amusing

to hear conversations so riveting at two in the morning.

Several months later, when the air had turned cooler,

and the leaves had all fallen, marking the transition to winter,

the streetlights did not hear any noise from the ground,

but in fact felt a coldness so suddenly surround.

And slowly, so steadily, the streetlights did see

a sight that would surely fill all children with glee:

drifting softly from the sky was indeed the first snow,

landing and resting on the sidewalk below.

They knew the next morning it would all be displaced

when the children delightfully made snowballs and raced

to see who could possibly hit the other first,

then making a snowman and snow angels — immersed

in the genuine beauty and wonder of snow.

Who knew the streetlights would be first to know?

Night after night, the streetlights still see

the inner-workings of life after two in the morning.

With amusement, interest, and overall contentment,

all are considered a good night well-spent.

Replacing the shadows with patches of light,

they simply hope to ease any moment of strife.

And though people tend to so swiftly pass by,

the streetlights still rest in the comfort of the sky.

Shades of black, shades of blue, the lights tend to wonder

if the sky’s looking down as the streetlights sit under.

—streetlights, by helena

—crimson canvas, by nicole

I’ve had late night car conversations many times in my life. Often it’s after a Wendy’s run at 11pm, or parked in the driveway of a friend when I drop them off. They’re sometimes heartfelt, sometimes amusing, not usually emotional. But that night with Hannah in her car, in the empty parking lot of the Regal Theater, tears streamed down our faces as we glanced out the windows at the lights from the marquee. For the first time in our lives, we didn’t feel like we had to hide.

Faith was a crucial part of my upbringing. My parents were both raised Catholic, so naturally, my siblings and I were as well. Sunday morning Mass was a fixed part of our schedule; unless you were contagious or physically dying, you went to church—no excuses. We attended Catholic school from kindergarten all the way through high school as well. I grew up in love with my faith. I joined the children’s choir starting in second grade, stole my mother’s lectionary so I could pretend to read out of it in my free time, and became an altar server the second I was old enough, even though I was way too tiny to carry the cross at the front of the procession. I loved Jesus because I was told he died for my sins. Unfortunately, I naively believed everything I was told was “right” or “wrong.” Of course, I didn’t realize the damaging nature of blindly accepting beliefs until years later.

My sophomore year of high school, I was preparing for the sacrament of Confirmation. As a requirement, I attended small group discussions during the week and large group classes on Sundays that focused on various facets of Church teachings. One Sunday afternoon, the topic was same-sex attraction and marriage. We gathered in our brightly-lit hall and settled in metal folding chairs around a projector screen. Brita, our youth minister informed us what exactly the Catholic Church teaches on homosexuality. She paced back and forth in the front, making eye contact with as many of us as she could, as she clarified that the Church doesn’t hate gay people as most people may think. This was a surprise to me. Waving her hands for emphasis, she repeated several times, “Love the person, hate the sin.” I nodded my head along vigorously. Love the person, hate the sin. I drove home that day under cloudy grey skies, unable to concentrate on the radio because I was too busy thinking about everything Brita had said. The feelings may be natural, but they’re only wrong if you act on them. Right?

My parents seemed to feel a little differently. Until about middle school, I had practically no understanding of what same-sex attractions meant because my

family blocked them out entirely. I can recall countless occasions when we were watching the news and a story about gay rights came on. Within seconds of the story’s introduction, my mom or dad would lunge for the remote and frantically change the channel. It’s not like they would blatantly condemn homosexuality. They erased it. The topic was taboo, like how some parents avoid telling their children about sex, or keep them from watching violent movies. In my mind, gay people’s existence was so incredibly wrong and sinful that even hearing or talking about it was, by extension, wrong. If my eleven-year-old, devoutly Catholic self found out that eighteen-year-old me would go see Love, Simon and cry about it in the car afterwards, she would have preemptively gone to confession and said seventy Rosaries in preparation.

One afternoon a couple months after that Confirmation class, I was laying sideways on my bed with my feet dangling over the edge, surfing YouTube on my phone and half listening to my parents’ conversation in the kitchen. I was watching videos from one of my favorites, Dodie Clark. She played the ukulele and wrote her own songs, and was basically everything I ever wanted to be. She had released a new video simply entitled, “My Sexuality.” Partly out of curiosity and partly out of boredom, I clicked it. Although it was a public video with tens of thousands of views, it seemed as though she spoke directly to me. She said she didn’t like to conform to labels, but she knew she had felt romantic feelings for both men and women. She talked about how she didn’t realize for the longest time that her romantic feelings for women were, in fact, romantic. Wanting to kiss girls isn’t normal to most women, apparently. After years of confusion and uncertainty, she realized the validity of her feelings and was finally proud of who she was. The video came to a close, and I lay still, feeling slightly confronted and uncomfortable about what she just said. Almost as if to keep myself from processing what I had just heard, I clicked on the first suggested video: an original song of Dodie’s, titled “She”. As she sang softly about falling in love with a girl who doesn’t see her as anything more than a friend, a lump formed in my throat. I sat up abruptly and stars flooded my vision, my mind both frozen and racing.

The noise from my family talking downstairs began to fade, and the voice in my head grew louder. What if I didn’t actually believe everything my parents had taught me growing up? What if there was a reason I was so intrigued to discover

that the church loves the person but just hates the sin? What if, despite everything my parents had ingrained in me as a child, homosexuality wasn’t wrong? What if all the times I had wanted to be best friends with a girl were maybe more than I had let on? Transfixed, I shook the stars out of my sight and the room came back into focus.

It took me months to accept that maybe I didn't believe everything I had learned all my life, and that somehow that was okay. It took me months to learn that loving a person of the same sex wasn’t inherently wrong. It took me months to realize that I felt romantic attraction towards girls. It took me months to realize that I was bisexual. And it took me longer to realize that was okay.

Even as I became comfortable with my identity, I remained uncomfortable with the potential of my family ever finding out. Based on everything I had been taught, I thought it was best not to say anything. I dreaded hearing my own parents tell me that who I loved was sinful, and feared the truth could endanger my safety and financial dependency on them. So I kept it to myself. A lot of late nights were spent crying while stopped at an intersection, driving down a darkened freeway, or parked in the driveway. Late nights spent sitting in the shadows, only partially illuminated by the reflection of the rain and the moonlight against the asphalt. Sitting alone, crying because I was certain the people closest to me wouldn't love me if they knew. Moving to college, I had hoped for a chance to be open and more comfortably grow into myself. But instead, it was taken away. With no car and no room to myself, I didn’t have a driver’s seat to feel safe in. I had no idea that a few weeks later I would regain the opportunities for those midnight moments of honesty. I had no idea that soon I would meet a girl who would perfectly understand everything I was going through and offer a shoulder to cry on. All I knew was that, for the present being, I was stuck under the fluorescent lights of the desk in my shared dorm room, alone.

At first I hoped that even though it was still a religious atmosphere, people would be more accepting and I wouldn’t have to be afraid anymore. But after a few months, I realized that I had transitioned to yet another confining environment filled with people who would judge or invalidate me. I dated a guy for a few months that winter. A little while in, I felt as though I wasn't being completely honest. I wanted our relationship to be transparent, and for us to communicate well. However, seconds after I came out to him, he broke up with me. That was all the proof I needed to know I still didn't have a place to be honest about who I was.

I met Hannah through Shalom. I had been attending the chapel service every few weeks since the beginning of the semester, and decided to reply to an email to help lead worship for it. She and I were randomly paired together. At first, we weren't close. We got together to plan and sing worship and that was it. We sang well together.

The next semester, we found out we were in a Humanities class together. Not to say that the class was unbearable, but I did witness two people apply to transfer schools while in that class. Hannah sat two rows behind me, and occasionally we would text each other our opinions of the lecture, just to give ourselves something to do. One particularly mundane Monday, we were discussing a unique piece of art entitled “Floor Burger” that consisted of a large-scale sculpture of - you guessed it - a burger sitting on the floor. The majority of the class was either dozing off, on their phone, or working on other homework. It was possibly the longest seventy-five minutes of my life. I tried blinking quickly and rolling my shoulders to try to stay engaged, but to no avail. Then, as if she had read my mind, Hannah texted me, “There’s something more important happening right now” - Harry Styles was rumored to be bisexual. While on tour, he had performed an unreleased song that implied romantic feelings with both boys and girls. She mentioned how it felt incredibly validating for her, and I agreed. Unexpectedly, we found out we were both bisexual during HUMA class. Not the most conventional, but then again, neither was the floor burger.

As luck would have it, we had this conversation just as the movie Love, Simon had entered theaters. Love, Simon followed the story of teenager Simon Spier, who thinks he might be gay but hasn’t told anyone. When he falls for a fellow classmate, his secret is unexpectedly revealed and he is forced to publicly come to terms with his identity. She texted me the week after asking me if I wanted to see it with her. Of course, I agreed.

We set out one March evening to a small theater several miles from school. We didn’t want to risk running into anyone we knew. In true Oregon fashion, a clear, spring evening had evolved into dreary rainfall. Driving through the nearly empty streets, I glanced out the passenger side window. The trees cast shadows that were dispelled by the street lights, and rain glistened off the pavement as the car splattered the water onto the sidewalk. The world outside was seemingly still, but

inside my mind was racing. I was nervous. Nonetheless, I walked into that theater with Hannah. Fortunately, we were the only two people under forty in the theater. Part of me was relieved. We sat in the second to the last row, in front of an older couple. I tapped my leg in anticipation, and glanced and saw Hannah was doing the same. She reached over and squeezed my hand, and just as the lights were beginning to dim, she smiled.

Towards the end of the movie, Simon approached his mom and asked her if she had known he was gay. She responded that, yes, she could tell he had been hiding something. Without prompting, she reassured him that he was still the same person he had always been. Except now, he could be more like himself than he ever was before. After all those years of holding his breath, he could exhale. Hannah grabbed my hand again, and held on. With shallow, shaky breaths, we let tears silently stream down our faces as we watched a mother say to her child what we might never get to hear.

Our exit from the theater was quiet. The rain had stopped by that time, leaving behind a watery reflection of the streetlights off the asphalt of the nearly vacant parking lot. When we got in, everything came to a halt. We sat unmoving in the darkness for a few moments. The red light by the keyhole blinked on and off.

“It hurts that I know I’d never have that conversation with my mom,” I started, “Not even close.” A car pulled into the drive-through of the McDonalds across the way.

“Yeah,” she answered, “I’ve talked to my mom about it a couple of times and she just doesn’t seem to understand”. The last remaining car in the parking lot lit up and pulled out onto the main road.

“I just hate that I have to hide a huge part of who I am,” I said. I tried to exhale but my breath shuddered. The raindrops clinging to the glass mirrored the returning tears that clung to my eyelashes.

“I don’t know if I’ll ever tell my parents,” I confessed. Hannah reached across the cup holders to take my hand once more.

“And that’s okay. Just know that I am here for you whenever you need to talk. About anything,” she said, looking directly at me, nodding slightly. I inhaled deeply and nodded back, holding tight to her hand. The stoplight behind her changed color.

I don’t remember everything that was said that night in her car, but I do know that it was the first time in my life that I felt someone truly understand. The first time someone saw who I was in my entirety, and loved me wholeheartedly for it. That night as I cried side-by-side with Hannah, I was set free. For years, I had lived with inner and outer voices that convinced me that my love for women was invalid, sinful, and inherently wrong. But this time, they spoke a little quieter because I wasn’t alone anymore. Not everything was instantly fixed in that moment. My family would still change the channel every time a gay rights issue came on the news. My church would still preach to me about the sinfulness of any love not between a man and a woman. I was still surrounded by people who were likely to reject our identities. But with Hannah, I had someone to cry with. I had someone who would listen and relate. I had a place where I could love the person I wanted to, and be loved for it. Even if it was hidden away in a parked car in a darkened Regal Theater parking lot.

—love the person, by helena

With lips of amber

and a tongue of silk

she’s a creature created

to encroach on the camber

and the beasts and their ilk

and she won’t be stopped ‘til her

appetite’s sated

—by kayla