Competition Thirty-Four Shortlisted: Red Blue Green by Joyce Bingham
What if the supermarket delivery came on a blue Monday instead of a green Tuesday by a slip of my finger on a keyboard, and I saw your red car parked further along the street from our own parking space.
What if I had to change my dental appointment and found you at home, in the kitchen with two cobalt coffee cups, and a rusty-lip cigarette in the bin. The faint jade scent of someone else, which dissipated as I walked through our space.
What if there were a different calendar to the one we shared in the kitchen, with its scribbles in artery-red and vein-blue. To catch you unawares, I turned up at unexpected times—I left before you, sometimes after you, wrote you cryptic notes in Vulcan-blood ink.
What if your meeting in the hotel was scheduled in the sapphire suite but it really was in emerald, and you missed me watching by five minutes, would you know when you walked through the lobby on the ruby carpet?
What if I saw your expenses claim, and worked out the dates and times of your azure events and verdant meetings. I highlighted some of them in fluorescent scarlet and found out the name of the perfume that haunted me.
What if you called me, and told me lies. Would I know which was raspberry diva and which was striking cyan. But I don’t care anymore, the spring meadow line has been drawn beneath you.
Joyce Bingham is a Scottish writer, living the North-West of England, whose work has appeared in publications such as Flash Frog, WestWord, Molotov Cocktail, Bending Genres, and Ghost Parachute. When she’s not writing, she puts her green fingers to use as a plant whisperer and Venus fly trap wrangler.
Photo by Dévora GUTIERREZ at Pexels
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