POEM OF THE MONTH SEPTEMBER 2025:

Revisiting the Bipolar Rainbow

It’s harder to comprehend without color,

And harder still when perceiving only two.

Blue and red without the slightest purple upon which to rest the eye?

Unnatural, such a world summons madness,

Replaces reason with exhaustion as my self slips away.

Finally, one morning, I awoke,

Looked in the mirror,

And I could see the whites of my eyes.

Stained with neither the blues of ice nor sky

Nor the light red of the flesh

Closest to the rind of a watermelon,

I saw the white flag waved

By an organism unable to keep

Holding its breath blue

And spilling its blood red.

In recovery,

The blue deepened to its darkest.

I: relied on my family and friends, psychotherapy,

pharmacological polytherapy, art, intentionally refused capitalist productivity, found community,

And the blue gradually lightened.

The red tempered to pink.

My softest parts, always my most resilient,

Reemerged with even more gusto.

Orange winked into vision as the intensity of red

Lent its creativity and verve

To the soothing joie de vivre

Of the yellow cheer I collected in scraps.

I learned to appreciate blue’s serenity,

Making way for green growth

And the passion of purple spirituality.

A genuine, whole rainbow shimmered into view,

And though it was turbulent under the bipolar rainbow,

I am grateful.

Post-traumatic growth gifted the opportunity to

Rediscover, reconsider, and rebuild,

A path not taken by the uninspired.

Following the architecture of my technicolor heart,

I chose to nurture a life I actually want to live,

Imbued with a smorgasbord of color,

Of which blue and red are but a portion of the panoply.