It must have been something that I read;
it must have been something that I saw, or heard;
it must have been something that someone said;
it must have been something in the colour,
or in the sound of a word.
One minute I am staring at the vibrant red cover of a book,
and then, the next thing that I know, an entire hour has passed-
I am in shock, as if I have been hit by a truck.
I felt like I had been newly thawed-out
after having been frozen in time-
I cannot account for anything that happened in that lost hour;
however, everywhere that I looked now,
everything of the colour red instantly jumped out at me,
more so than before, as if it were by design.
Buses, telephone boxes, post boxes, the Union Flags red crosses-
everywhere that I went, every shade of red was in sight and in my head:
from the crimson curls of a beautiful woman’s hair,
to the attention-seeking red light at some traffic lights
telling me to stop up-ahead.
Cars, clothing, flowers, insects-
a Porsche racing passed me; a man wearing a British Heart foundation t-shirt;
the roses in someone’s garden; the ladybird that landed on my nose-
everything that could be red was red,
from the largest to the smallest of things and objects.

I do not know what was so special about the day,
nor why red of all the colours of the rainbow
chose to brighten the colour of my blood for those few hours-
maybe I looked too close at the pictures of Venus’ transit across the sun,
or maybe my mind needed that gift of a powerful colour
to make me forget about the grey clouds and the showers.
I am sure that I once read that there are some people
who believe that the universe is colour-coded;
I personally do not know for sure, but I do believe
that colour can compel us, on occasion, to see, feel,
and act in a certain way- like the tightening, or the loosening, of a thread-
that is what happened to me:
one moment I am seeing stars,
and the next I am seeing red.

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