June Is Brown

by Anisa Sanchez

Color is not just a sight

it often invites a feeling, a sense, a memory

Red

for instance

a shiny brownish mud of grief.

or the red metal of the car accident

that took your brother’s life in the fourth grade

Green

of the yellow muted variant

is the taste of blood

from the time I broke my arm in the meadow

I bit the inside of my cheek

and laid, tasting iron, looking at half-dried grass

Gray

with a bit of lilac

a bit of blue

helps you recall the color of the sky when I told you

I would leave to a new school and home and day-to-day

but that you must remain

collecting colors

Anisa Sanchez, a sophomore at Lincoln High School in San José, is the runner-up for our 2019 Emerging Writers Young Voices Contest. She says she hopes to become a better person and a better poet everyday.