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 it’s the closest you’ll 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 can’t help but crave that new new. After all, you were never searching for colors but for one color: “Razzle Dazzle Rose,” which is never as pink as you think it’s going to be.

Mercedes Lucero is the author of Stereometry (Another New Calligraphy 2018) and the chapbook, In the Garden of Broken Things (Flutter Press 2016).  She is the 2017 winner of the Langston Hughes Creative Writing Award for Poetry and her writing can be found in Puerto del Sol, The Pinch, Heavy Feather Review, and Curbside Splendor among others. You can see more of her work atwww.mercedeslucero.com. Twitter: @loose_arrow