The Color of Giving

A painter she isn’t but once upon a happier time Nina fancied herself a poet. Today she writes with her finger in the air above her bed. Her words are vaporous passing almost before they are birthed

F rom her bed she can see a sliver of sky. It’s pale blue today just shades off yesterday’s washed-out white. The color makes all the difference to her mood. Or maybe it is her mood that makes all the difference to the color?

If she could paint Nina would coax shining streaks of life from dull blocks of watercolor. She would wield a magic wand dripping sunset shades and she would run color onto every surface she could reach. The bed linen. The IV pole. The wall.

Nina dreams in technicolor. When she is sleeping life tastes of rainbows. When she wakes up there is only white and gray.

Of course there are also the mood charts Sarah makes her enter into the iPad every evening. They are mustard yellow and dull red and flashed through with white teeth gnashed or grinning weirdly but the colors are computerized and lifeless. Nina hates the charts. Sometimes she thinks they are more depressing than the illness.