The Color Carries

A man walked past wearing cobalt.

Not blue.

Cobalt.

The kind of blue that stops you.

I stopped.

Mid-stride.

Mid-thought.

Mid-whatever I was doing

that doesn't matter now.

He kept walking.

Didn't notice.

Cobalt doesn't care who sees it.

I haven't thought about that color

in years.

Maybe longer.

The color lives somewhere

I don't usually go,

in a room I keep locked,

in a time I've trained myself

not to enter.

But cobalt walked past me

on a stranger's shoulders

and suddenly I was years away,

suddenly I was standing

in a place I've spent years

not standing in.

I kept walking.

He was already gone.

The color was already fading

into the ordinary blue

of an ordinary shirt

on an ordinary day.

But something traveled

with me after that.

Something the color left behind.

Something that tastes like

recognition

and refusal,

like a door opening

that I'd spent time

keeping closed.