Searching for Color

 

My childhood was black and white.

No gray, no shimmer, no soft in-between.

Either I had it or I didn’t.

Either the light came through

Or the bulb flickered out too soon.

My mom wore her strength like a uniform.

Pressed, proud, precise.

A single mother in the military

Trying to illuminate two little girls

In a world that forgot to plug in the lamp.

My dad was mostly a title.

A name I called between ages eight and eleven

Before and after this period silence tucked him away like an old photo

In the back of a drawer that is a struggle to open.

Now I understand.

He was a boy trying to father a girl

While learning how to father himself.

I never knew the warmth of maternal grandparents.

They were gone before I could whisper, "grandma."

My aunts and uncles tried to patch the hole

But some voids do not hold stitches.

I used to dream about a trip to grandma’s house.

Imagined her scent, her songs—

The way she might have said my name.

My dad’s parents were still living

And my grandfather still breathes today.

But the bond never grew.

I used to blame my dad for that.

Now I just sigh.

Understanding does not erase ache

But it softens it.

At eleven, death came knocking

And left with my aunt.

I learned how absence

Can echo louder than laughter.

By 2015, my mom was gone.

My aunts and uncles, too.

The matriarchs turned to memories.

And here I am,

A Black woman grown from loss,

Searching for comfort

In the spaces they left behind.

Learning that grief

Is just love with nowhere to go.

And I am still learning

How to give it a home.