by Steve King
Copyright 1998
From out of nowhere, she turns on the light.
‘Suppose bananas aren’t really yellow?’ she says.
‘Or what if yellow is another color?
What is yellow to a banana?
Do we see the same colors at all?
What world of rainbows lives inside your head?
Why am I concerned enough to ask you?
I’m no friend to strange philosophies,
but you have told me that you are in love,
and my reality has changed forever
whether I choose to love you back, or no.
It all seems like bananas to me now.
Love and yellow, these are only names.
What are they really, and why are they so?
Just what does it mean for me to see it?
More than the banana just to be it?’
And me, I only spoke to her of love.
I thought it was so simple,
almost like black and white,
on or off,
here or gone.
Too late, I see that nothing is so simple.
Love…
Bananas…
Now we are like apples and oranges.
