Grays upon grays

It’s a strange thing, this brain of mine
Nothing is black and white,
It’s all grays upon grays tucked neatly into coiling gray matter.
My thoughts race through the lobes of a never-ending roller coaster loop of gently curved bends, steep slopes, and free-falls, all the while begging to slow the ride. To skip the stomach-dropping descents. To escape the backwards and the upside-down. My thoughts want to hang in the moments of time suspension — at all the pinnacles where the wheels cling to the tracks.
It’s a strange thing, this heart of mine
Nothing is black and white;
It’s all grays upon grays tucked neatly among fat, flexing, vessels.
I place two fingers on a valley on my neck to check its pace — it skips a beat, there’s an extra beat, it beats wildly then slowly. Even broken, it still beats. On the black and white grid of the EKG printout, you’d see preciptious peaks brashly interrupt the lub-dub foothills. My heart wants to fly from the grid and ride the steady, gentle curves of the gray-edged sea. Back to the briny, back to the under-water ranges softened by time, and carried by the constant of the tide. How can a heart be so heavy yet weightless? Gravity has no response. I asked.
It’s a strange thing, this body of mine
Nothing is black and white;
It’s all grays upon grays tucked neatly into limbs, head, and torso.
In the sunlight, my skin darkens; in the darkness, it lightens. The sharp peaks of my fingertips give way to valleys between them; knees and elbows sharpen the angles of my limbs. Parts of my skin appear young; the rest is peppered with little, brown moles and red spots. One eye squints more when I smile and destroys the symmetry. Irises with glints of golds and greens encompass dark pupil-pools. A brow arches to tell a story with quickening cadences. My legs cross in a root-like tangle of flesh with ankles.
It’s a strange thing, this life of mine
Nothing is black and white;
I live in a valley surrounded by lub-dub foothills and mammoth mountains. Billions of years ago, a briny sea lived here instead. There were no ankles to darken in the sunlight.
