The Color Has No Color

Please cherish and love the people you love fully.

请尽全力去珍惜和爱你爱的人。

The overwhelming fragrance of

medium orchid, lemon chiffon, and mint cream

are in the room with you.

I stare

at you,

you are there

silent

with the attention of all in attendance.

I bet

you must detest the rough makeup,

with the wrong eye shadow

with the wrong blush

with the wrong lipstick.

I am terrified

of seeing you through my reflection,

my outline flawlessly overlapping yours.

I realize

that you cannot cross the line

which harshly robbed you away from my world.

Nonetheless, I inhale

every single colorful hue greedily,

and beg them to stay

please…

I took this series of photographs on a train. I leaned against the window, as the train moved at a speed fast enough to smudge the color. This distracted me from my otherwise noisy and anxious reality. For capturing this fleeting moment was something I selfishly wished to preserve: an instantaneous beauty begging to stay. This brief encounter reminded me of my mom.

My mom passed away several months before my freshman year. The poem The Color Has No Color depicts my distinct feelings I had at her funeral. I was her only child. Now I was holding a black and white portrait of her, and the color had no color.

Wishing my mom to stay inspired my triptych. I used solely color to describe my need for the word “stay”. In the first panel, I tried to recall every bit of her, her comforting scent, her tender touch, and her proud smile. In the second panel, I found myself confused, mad, sad and depressed. My world abandoned me. I did not understand. Why should I be treated this way? Why couldn’t she just stay with me? In my third panel, I express my current feeling towards the world; a mixture of loud red and a hint of goldfish brown. I am discovering the she inside of me. I am she, just like she never had left me.

Please cherish and love the people you love fully.