ORANGE IS THE COLDEST COLOR. For me, for the snowflakes falling outside the window of the smallest coffee shop in town, and for the hue in her round cheeks that is almost the same color as her pointy knuckles. It’s nearly impossible to look away from any signs of life from her that she’s holding so dearly, which I’m afraid to death will be shattered by no other menaces but me. I’m a cruel entity, a stark contrast to her smile that lights up despite knowing the fact that the safe haven she’s currently sitting on will soon dissipate.
Orange is the color of her coat and the curtains hiding a bit of our silhouettes from the street. Hope is a lie that someone somehow managed to create and successfully alter everyone’s way of viewing their dream. Blue is the background of her delicate figure, and reality is one tap away from my finger to pull and break right on our empty table.
The empty table resembles my empty heart and empty stare — the longing for something unreachable. Orange is love and love is not for me.
“I’m imagining things.” Wind blows oh so softly when she speaks. “About you staying around.”
She doesn’t know how regretful I am hearing the word ‘imagine’ before the revealed subject’s pointed at me. She’s most likely not aware too that I’m currently trying my best not to stab myself with a knife across the room.
So I put up a smile instead.
“It’s best for me to go.” The sweet coffee I sipped seconds ago is not helping my throat to be more relaxed at all. “You’ll live well.”
“Without you?” Her reply is almost like a reflex and my reflex is thinking of burning myself to ash. “Hard to assume, at least for me.”
Please just do. I beg you to at last pretend that you don’t hope for my company. It’s going to be better without me I swear to god, just, believe.
My plea is unspoken. I just have to wish that those words flash as some desperate glint in my eye that she doesn’t refuse to see.
“You’re loved. By a lot of people.” I’m not one of them, at least not in a way you’re praying for or in a way that is not destructive. “Everything will turn out good for you, I believe it. I’ll cheer up for you from far away.” And I have to stop whatever’s going on from happening before you start to be destructive to yourself too. “Trust me, there’s a lot of good things for you.” And that is not me, obviously.
Orange is the dilated pupils of hers whose color lasts for a second before it turns back to a whole purity that I shall ever not disrupt with my filthy hand. Blue is the atmosphere around my heavy shoulders, silently killing both my empathy and her desire to hold my heart and bring it back to life.
She sighs vulnerably. Her lovely voice is knocking the wind off when she says, “I love you. I like you a lot.”
I guess books and movies are all lies when they say confession is sweet. I just want to kill myself more.
“I’ve dreamt about us picking flowers in the neighborhood’s park. Our fingers would intertwine and so would our hearts. Mine was blue before I recognized love in the way you talk. Its color burns though, little by little, turning golden. Like pumpkin pie that I had always forgotten to take a bite. Some other time, it’s brighter like a bowl of tangerine my mom peeled off for me when I was a little and even now. But as my adoration towards you grows like the garden I imagined earlier, orange fills out my chest like autumn. My favorite period of the year. And you, you are my favorite person that’s going to, unfortunately, leave me when it’s time. Just like the season. Just like autumn. You’re leaving even when you’re very welcomed to stay a little longer. Forever, even.”
If yearning was a poet, they’d be rotten humane. I once said she’s the best poet I’ve ever met in person. Even when she wails, she doesn’t stutter. Even when I’m killing her devotion, she still sings lullaby to my ears. So sickeningly sweet I almost vomited.
Oh, and me. I was never a poet, nor a poem. I’m just a disgusting person who tries their best to avoid every love one has suffocatingly been bearing and flourishing to death. I was born a leaver.
“I’m not meant for you. Trust me, I’m not the one you want.”
“But am I the one you want?”
“You deserve better than — “
“Am I. The one. You want.” She breathes roughly, like a sane being she is. Her follow up question dangles like a flower screams to be plucked out. “This is a yes or no question. Answer with either one of those.”
Orange is not the coldest color when I notice her blurred vision. Her lips shamelessly tremble with held-back dying pleas. Autumn will come next year and she will smile again, and by that time comes I will already be erased from her gallery of tender imaginations.
She doesn’t understand that I and my love can kill. Thus I set red to the table.
“No.”
