✨ The Girl Whose Favorite Color is Eigengrau

Compares Words To Stones in a Japanese Garden...

The Girl Whose Favorite Color is Eigengrau Compares Words To Stones in a Japanese Garden

When she was young, the girl whose favorite color is eigengrau liked paint-by-numbers, though she never cared for connect-the-dots. This she recalls as she walks along a stepping-stone path through a Japanese garden. She has read that in certain parts of the garden the stones have been placed at awkward intervals for a slow and contemplative passage, while elsewhere stones have been laid evenly to encourage a natural gait. Still elsewhere the stones’ placement suggests a hurried pace through where the garden is not yet finished, where it may never be finished. Darkness too, thinks the girl whose favorite color is eigengrau, changes the way we lope through it. Darkness, too, in some places may never be finished. And words, like stones in the darkness, are laid over here, haltingly, unevenly, and over there, as flowing and slick as gray paint.

—Jessica Goodfellow

✨ This poem is in honor of our May theme: Color Palette

From Mendeleev's Mandala, Mayapple Press Copyright © 2015. Used by permission of the poet. Photo by Cosmic Timetraveler, Creative Commons, via Unsplash.