When I open my mouth with my eyes closed, everything is grayscale, a dot matrix. 2400 speed black and white Ilford film in a toy camera. Spackled black and white and gray. A correct assumption. An intuition unapologetically biased in your lean.

When I clench my jaw, my mouth floods with orange. A bright curious orange bursting with red. I clench a little harder, though, and the orange becomes blood maroon. Dark and darker. Fogged red.

When I eventually learn to breathe, my closed eyes are filled with fuschia and purple and pink. I now feel your hand waving over my eyes. I remember blue, but do not want it to surface. I like this pink. It reminds me of hand dyed fabrics in India worn by men across their bodies as a first defense in their religion.

I breathe with my mouth closed and then breathe with my mouth open and the funniest thing happens when I breathe with my mouth open. When I breathe, with my mouth open, I see you and me in a conversation full of questions we do not wish to answer. It is enough that we can hear each other.

When I open my mouth the world is a fluorescent grayscale, a documentation no one but you can see.