• Since the day you're born
    you wear rose colored glasses.
    Everything is bright and colorful.
    There are the simplistic joys:
    Santa Clause,
    the Easter Bunny,
    the Tooth Fairy.
    And there are the sugar-coated lies:
    "There's nothing wrong with tia,
    she's just feeling sick."
    "Mija, your uncle died in a car accident."
    But auntie wasn't sick,
    she was dancing in green fields that night.
    And tio was in no car crash,
    he was hit in the head with a shovel
    during a gang fight.
    Some of us start to realize
    things aren't what they seem
    early on.
    The color in our lenses
    start to fade,
    and we can see everything
    as they always were.
    Others are suddenly blinded
    by broken shards,
    our spectacles smashed by sudden reality.
    Black and white.
    Like the newspaper I found
    years later,
    of my uncle's death.
    Sharp and silent,
    like the smell of my aunt
    years after that,
    a familiar stench
    that I finally understood.
    Now there's not even
    black and white
    anymore.
    Just. . .gray.
    All gray.
    And I understand.
    So don't lie to me anymore.
    Tell me things like they are.
    Or maybe, just maybe, you lie
    because you know
    that I understand now.
    I threw away
    my colored contacts
    long ago.
    So take off yours
    and understand
    that we understand
    and we see in
    gray.