A mother teaches her Neurodiverse child colours
What colour is the dog?
The dog is brown.
Can you see the brown dog?
What colour is the cat?
The cat is black.
Can you see the black cat?
What colour is the school?
The school is too-bright primary colours.
Can you see the too-bright school?
What colour are the other children?
The other children are the colour of noise that I can taste.
Can you see the other children?
What colour is the world?
The world is a cacophony of nerve endings.
Can you see the world and what it offers you?
Can you see your place in the world?
Can you see your shape cut out of its fabric like a paper doll
where you will fit, one day? Can you see it?
What colour is your fear?
Is it orange, or red?
Can you feel it scorching the edges of the paper doll?
Does it burn?
What colour is time?
Is it endless blue, stretching too far ahead
like a trailing ribbon you try to grasp, then watch
as it floats away?
What colour is your sadness?
Is it grey, like sodden clouds, lying low
in fields until it is cut with a razor?
What colour is your frustration?
Is it purple, like bruising
on knuckles which kept the walls
of the house awake last night.
What colour is your hope?
Is it green, undisturbed
like the bottom of a still pond?
Do you dare to break the surface of the water,
grasp it like a pebble from the ocean?
What colour is your future?
Your future can be any colour you like.
Can you see your future?
Can you see it yet?
Can you see it?
Can you?
Lisa Falshaw lives and works in West Yorkshire. She has had several poems published in Black Bough anthologies, and poems published by Atrium, Dreamcatcher, Dawn Treader, Strix, Fig Tree and Fevers of the Mind. Find her on X @LisaFalband Facebook Lisa Falshaw.