Member Poem

In all the literature I’ve come across over so many years,
In all the pages and paragraphs and words,
Characters are illustrated in vibrancy.
 
Their eyes are always bright and blue like oceans,
Or deep and fierce and dark like a fire

Their skin is soft and brown
Or smooth and fair

They always sparkle and glimmer and shine
From the top of their perfect heads
To the bottom of their perfect feet.
 
They are a sea of colors
Fictional humans in the forms of rainbows,

Unreal beings,
So bright that you are blinded;

It becomes impossible to see them.
 
He

is shades of browns and greys.
 
He’s not a burst of light,
He’s not a warmth that seeps into your bones
Like sun on pavement.
 
He’s not a neon sign on a rainy night,
He doesn’t glitter or flash.
 
He

is shades of browns and greys.
 
He’s all long legs that walk too fast
And freckled arms that always have goosebumps
And calloused hands that rub his face when the lump is visible in his throat.
 
He’s all ashen eyes
Dull and gray like stones,

That crinkle and cry and question,
That come to life in steely movements.

He’s two dimples
Deep and curved like the sliver of a moon.
 
He’s a hurricane of a man,
Wrapped in normalcy;

He gives life to the simple words
So frequently used,
Their meanings have been lost.

Good.
Kind.
Funny.

He gives them worth again,
In the ways he embodies them so wholly.

He

Is as
Strange
And beautiful

As the words that overflow books
In their attempt to capture
Even a fraction
Of him.
 
To turn dullness into fantasy,
To bring dreams to sticks and stones—

This is his talent,
Perfected without practice.

Him,
His kindness,
His old sweaters,

All his little flaws—
Perfected without practice.
 
He is shades of browns and greys,
And if you don’t know him,
Your eyes will skip right over him,

And there, he will be lost,

In a sea of stunning clichés
Of dullness draped in colors.
 
He’s stained glass,
Cracked and creased,
Pleasant on a cloudy day,

But beautiful

When the light shines through it.
 
He
is shades of browns and greys.