You want your falling in love to be like seeing every color at once. You dumped all the crayons on the carpet just to smell the inside of the box because itโs the closest youโll ever get. Open your mouth and say Tinder without using your tongue. Get drunk on limerence, on the smell of some new skin. Swipe yourself speechless. You never deleted your dating apps like you told them you would. Like you were hoping for the end. You canโt help but crave that new new. After all, you were never searching for colors but for one color: โRazzle Dazzle Rose,โ which is never as pink as you think itโs going to be.
Mercedes Lucero is the author ofย Stereometryย (Another New Calligraphy 2018) and the chapbook,ย In the Garden of Broken Thingsย (Flutter Press 2016). ย She is the 2017 winner of the Langston Hughes Creative Writing Award for Poetry and her writing can be found inย Puerto del Sol,ย The Pinch, Heavy Feather Review,ย andย Curbside Splendorย among others. You can see more of her work atwww.mercedeslucero.com. Twitter: @loose_arrow