The Colors Are Wrong

The colors are wrong.

Not enough to stop anything.

Just enough to notice.

I learned something about that in the ward.

Changing states internally shifted what I saw.

Not imagined.

Not symbolic.

Literal.

Urgency without exit pulled everything toward red.

Dark blue flattened into black.

Dark green carried something else—

something closer to red than it should have been.

It mattered.

Because details matter.

It was the first time I knew, without question,

that perception could move

without anything outside changing.

Some of the women could finish a three hundred piece puzzle in record time.

I had never seen that kind of speed.

Never stopped to think about how it was done.

Until it was so far ahead of me

that I had to ask.

I was looking for shapes.

Edges. Corners. Fit.

She wasn’t.

“I’m not matching shapes,” she said.

“I’m matching colors.”

Colors and shades so close together

my eyes couldn’t separate them.

What I thought was careful

was already behind.

Shape had been the obvious way.

Until it wasn’t.

The red shift is what happens when light travels.

Distance changes it.

What begins tight and white doesn’t stay that way.

It moves through blue

and eventually settles toward red.

Not because anything changed at the source.

Just because of the distance.

In the garden, that shift is constant.

Early light holds things in place.

Leaves come first.

Full. Green.

Later, something changes.

The same plants begin to move differently.

Not pushed.

Just responding.

Flower comes when the light shifts far enough.

Unless something interferes.

It’s subtle.

But it’s enough.

Over time, I started noticing the sky differently.

Not blue the way I remembered it.

More like a washed white.

Fluorescent.

Not wrong enough to name.

Just off.

In the garden, things don’t always line up anymore.

Plants move out of rhythm.

Flower too early.

Or hold too long

and miss it.

Their growth feels interrupted.

Not dead.

Just unsure when to be what they are.

I recognize that.

I was looking for shape.

The light had already shifted.

And I didn’t notice when it did.

The colors aren’t wrong.

They just don’t match

the way I remember them.