Thursday, March 28, 2002

OH, OLIVE GREEN

Oh, olive green. You are my favorite color in the crayon box. You are my cardigan sweater. You are my corduroy suit with leather elbow patches like pimentos. You are the interior fabric of my dad’s ‘76 Volvo station wagon. Oh, olive green I can hardly get enough of you.

I even love you with pocks and scars olive green. Oh olive green now close your ears. Some people call you “puke green”. But they are the “gray is the new black” folks who don't know what they're talking about. And I don’t want to mention your embarrassing second cousin "drab", because he’s a mood killer. The army’s color of choice. They're a good match if you ask me.

Oh olive green I can't get enough of you. But lately, I don’t know, it’s just not the same.

Is it me or are you pulling away, olive green?
Something is driving a wedge between us. Are you seeing other people? I've seen you in software advertisements, and as prominent colors for covers of quasi D.I.Y. literary journals. You're running around everywhere like a floozy; like a royal blue or a cherry red might. You’re becoming accessible! Dare I say easy? Oh no olive green, feed me alone your pea soup love. Feed me alone, your dirty, dirty martini.
Drizzle me with your oils, olive green.

It was the day after St. Patrick’s Day, the gaudiest of all holidays, and I was feeling its cheap hangover mightily. And there you were olive green, passed out on the curb with a Leprechaun’s hat and a four-leaf-clover in your clutched fist. Oh the shame.
The shame! Where did our love go? Where is your sense of what’s right, olive green?

I am traumatized olive green. But needless to say, I am coping. I am taking care of my self. I am doing what I need to do. I am taking a hot bath with candles. Oh olive green. I am slipping into my cardigan and sliding on my corduroy suit. I will be okay. I will sip green tea tonight, to us, and watch NOVA. Alone, alone my olive, olive green.


-AARON L