Colour chart

‘You mentioned you were decorating.

What colour are you painting your walls?’

‘I think perhaps…dead salmon.’

‘I don’t think that’s a colour…more like decor gone wrong.’

‘No, it is a colour. Just like arsenic.’

‘I repeat my previous statement.’

‘Fine. How about salon drab?’

‘There’s no need to insult this establishment.’

‘I’m not insulting it. That’s the name of the colour.

There’s also savage ground, bone, churlish green, pale hound–‘

‘Okay, okay, I take your point. But are you sure

that’s a colour chart you’re reading from?’

‘Of course, I picked it up from the undertaker’s this morning.’

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Different planes

It’s interesting, don’t you think

how some people can pick up a book

and get so lost in the pages

that hours pass without them noticing

while others

get stuck on the first lines, trying to concentrate

but re-reading the words over and over again

without any meaning seeping in?

How minds can differ, wired so similarly

yet ultimately different.

Is your red really the same as mine?

And why, when you say Wednesday, do I think green?

If we describe the same person,

why do two different images spring up?

Do we see different things,

or is it our focus

that’s different?

Your world is my world…

at least, I think it is.