Invisible in Full Color

I looked up at the sky
and saw light bending in ways
only the lonely ever notice
blue melting into white,
curves of brightness
that hid themselves
from passersby rushing under it.

I wondered if I was like that.
Too much color
for people who preferred
their world in muted tones.

If I were the sky,
my colors would be loud
orange, pink, blue,
turquoise and violet dancing at the edges,
yellow blooming in the cracks.
A spectrum too bright
for eyes that never learned
how to linger.

Yet no one saw me.

I sat in the yard,
the trees towering like quiet guards,
closing me in,
closing the world out.
People walked past
without a single glance
as if I were a shadow
the sun forgot to claim.

Their indifference whispered
what no child should hear:
that I was too much,
too vivid,
too alive
for the soft-blurred world around me.

But sometimes,
a butterfly would land beside me
its wings brushing my skin
like a secret meant only for us.
It saw me.
It knew me.
It recognized the colors I carried
because it was made of the same quiet boldness.

I gazed back up at the sky,
realizing I was not wrong
I was simply bright
in a world that had gone dim.

Present,
shining,
unchosen
a color they had no name for,
a child too vivid
to fit inside their narrow gaze.

And in that forgetting,
in that soft ache of being overlooked,
I learned something true:

Not everyone sees the light
that refuses
to hide.