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Description
I was red.
Sometimes. It depended how the lighting staff felt. I stood in a crowd, three hundred strong, here to listen, here to observe, but not all the same thing.
The man sitting by the speakers, left of the stage, had his eyes closed. He saw his defining moment. He saw his wife and child and home with a spare room and an office. He saw his car and his work desk that held a picture of his dying mother. He saw himself at his 18th birthday, singing drunkenly, sickly yet happily down the main city roads and becoming a man. This defined him. I disagreed. But I don’t think he was concerned.

I was blue.
A woman ordered a brandy and coke. The small colourful girl behind the bar nodded and left her. She closed her eyes. She felt his mouth against hers, her hands tight on his, his body matching hers, stride for stride. And he was not the man she would go home with tonight, who was standing beside her. She felt that defined her. So did I. Neither of us knew to what end or extend.

I was green.
I closed my eyes. I felt the music like damp feathers on my skin and harmless wasps in my throat and stomach. I rested on the man next to me, who never minds, who hasn’t closed his eyes. I clung to his arm and rested by his neck and tried to find my definition. It wouldn’t come and suddenly I am the damp feathers and I am the wings neatly wounding my body from the inside out. He kissed my head and the band left the stage.
They didn’t return.

I was yellow.
I wanted to be known by something else but colour. Something else but cold as we walked. Something else but impatient while we stopped and started. Something else but nervous as we get home. Something else by morning.
He never closes his eyes and I am calm. I am in light. In darkness. Defined.

Description
I was red.
Sometimes. It depended how the lighting staff felt. I stood in a crowd, three hundred strong, here to listen, here to observe, but not all the same thing.
The man sitting by the speakers, left of the stage, had his eyes closed. He saw his defining moment. He saw his wife and child and home with a spare room and an office. He saw his car and his work desk that held a picture of his dying mother. He saw himself at his 18th birthday, singing drunkenly, sickly yet happily down the main city roads and becoming a man. This defined him. I disagreed. But I don’t think he was concerned.

I was blue.
A woman ordered a brandy and coke. The small colourful girl behind the bar nodded and left her. She closed her eyes. She felt his mouth against hers, her hands tight on his, his body matching hers, stride for stride. And he was not the man she would go home with tonight, who was standing beside her. She felt that defined her. So did I. Neither of us knew to what end or extend.

I was green.
I closed my eyes. I felt the music like damp feathers on my skin and harmless wasps in my throat and stomach. I rested on the man next to me, who never minds, who hasn’t closed his eyes. I clung to his arm and rested by his neck and tried to find my definition. It wouldn’t come and suddenly I am the damp feathers and I am the wings neatly wounding my body from the inside out. He kissed my head and the band left the stage.
They didn’t return.

I was yellow.
I wanted to be known by something else but colour. Something else but cold as we walked. Something else but impatient while we stopped and started. Something else but nervous as we get home. Something else by morning.
He never closes his eyes and I am calm. I am in light. In darkness. Defined.