Nancy Murphy

The 2021 Pantone Color of the Year Was Dual: ULTIMATE GRAY + ILLUMINATING

They said it was a marriage of color.
They said it was a message of strength & hopefulness.
They said it’s good to push two shades close together.
               They didn’t say that illumination makes the gray grayer.
               They didn’t say shadows make the sun brighter.
               They didn’t say eventually all paint peels.
                             (They didn’t need to put ultimate in front of gray.)

They never asked what was most valuable to us. They never asked
               how much coverage we needed.

I would have said gray dusk is not uplifting.
I would have said sunlight hurts my eyes after tears.
               I would have said I lied only when I had to.
               To avoid staining my hands, I would have done anything.
                             I never would have dropped that match so close to him.

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Nancy Murphy is the author of the poetry chapbook, “The Space Carved by the Sharpness of Your Absence”  (Gyroscope Press, 2022). She was also a winner in the Aurora Poetry contest in Winter 2020. Her poems have appeared in The Baltimore Review, SWWIM, Sheila-Na-Gig, glassworks, The Ekphrastic Review, Anacapa Review (January 2024) and others. A long time volunteer at WriteGirl LA, Nancy has mentored teens through writing workshops and in the juvenile detention system.  www.nancymurphywriter.com