When I was a kid, my favourite colour was blue. It was the colour of the sky, and to my childish eyes that was enough. Later it became the colour of my grandmother’s eyes, and it got more substance – it was my most favourite colour.
Later on, it was also that album from Miles Davis which was in my dad’s CD collection, and the colour of the smoke rings during late night card games – Anabel and I would lie down on the carpet and play childish games, and in the background there would be music, cigarette smoke, and lots of swearing as our dads played cards. Winning or losing the game had no effect on the intensity nor the frequency of swearwords. I guess that’s where my swearing came from?
Later, we added a bit of red to the blue and it became a great song from Prince. It felt a lot different.
Today, blue feels like the tiles on the countertops of my parents’ kitchen, sleek and cold until someone, usually my mum, sets a warm pot on them before serving. Then they remain warm for a while.
Blue smells like the rain on the asphalt – my husband once told me that it is actually the smell of ozone, but I’d rather believe it is the smell of the blue that’s in the rain.
Blue sounds very much like the laughter of my younger brother (I say little but I write younger), discrete yet sudden, often just a breath, and very contagious. Incidentally, my brother and I share the same genetic anomaly in one of our eyes. Maybe that’s what blue looks like the most?
Blue also sounds like the voice of my grandmother, very soft, a bit sweetish even. Her voice sounds like powder, and blue sounds like her.
How can it sound like both of them at the same time?
Whatever lukewarm poetry I might write about it, blue still looks like the sky – but now I associate it with a lot more things and people that I love, so at least it’s my favourite colour for a reason.
From The Isolation Journals Prompt 111: Choose a colour (any colour!). Write about the sound, smell, taste and feel of that colour.
Lény en Germanie 