True Confessions About Color

"Why do Mexicans like bright colors?"

That's what a friend asked me in college.

I was simultaneously stunned at the stereotype coming from this intelligent, well-read person and stumped for how to respond.

I hate to admit it, but I spent a lot of years after that running away from color. Earth-toned sweaters, gray t-shirts, black turtlenecks became my wardrobe staples, worn over khakis or faded blue jeans.

As if I could hide my ethnicity under dun camouflage.

But you know what? Color has seeped back into my wardrobe and my life. Color is sneaky that way. Color can't be contained.

My closet still has its share of neutrals, but they share space with my happy tangerine sweater, a breezy safflower cable-knit pullover, my coral pink and turquoise t-shirts, a deep red Valentine of a blouse, my orange-and-red winter boots. My journals pulse with stories written in rainbow-hued markers and collages in a riot of colors.

Color is the expression of life: sunlight focused through a broken bottle to form a tiny rainbow on the wall, the upwelling of spirit and grace as a flower bursts into bloom, the pulsing of blood beneath a rosy cheek on a winter day.

Color makes me happy.

For more true confessions about color, head over to the paintedparrot, a new online literary journal curated by writer and editor (and my inspiring and true friend) Zee Zahava. The first post is a collection of "true" sentences about color written by 65 writers of various ages.