Iridescence – A Duologue

Alex “Zenny” Rich

@zenny.is.here

Multiple Choice

 

What do I know?

Nothing and everything

And that there is beauty in all the above.

 

They are connected to the world through a series of invisible golden strings

The puppeteer pulls at nylon threads

And they are dragged in another direction

Following a flower

A butterfly

A breeze

In someone like myself, this would inspire dread

But they have made friends with the chaos

And they have fallen in love with the puppeteer

 

They have also fallen in love with specificity

She is calm and introspective

And finds beauty in complication

She has cut herself free of the strings

To focus on what she chooses

 

And against the backdrop of the sky, you see her and them

One freed by choice and the other emancipated by the possibility

Their lips touch in front of the melting oranges and reds

And they know nothing and everything, and they find beauty

 

The flower is purple.

 

What do I know?

I know that I love you

And there is beauty in all the above

 

 

 

Technicolour

 

I exist in the uncomfortable space between nothing and creation

And I do not know who I am

 

Black and white and black and white and black and white and black and

 

Why does the world occur within me frame by frame?

Did I sin in a past life?

Like the screaming man on the street says,

As he furiously waves a crossed book?

Is there a reason I am different

To everyone I have ever met?

Is there a reason by words come to me

As easily as the Nile flows downstream?

Is there a reason why I see in technicolour?

 

Why is it that others skim over beauty like the Yellow Pages?

Looking only for the number they want?

They spray paint a tree with numbers

Petty communications covering knowledge Forever Old

Metaphysics taken too far eats away at my sense of being

seeing

loving

Why am I the one who can slip into a space of wonder?

 

Let me slip into this space in between

As I illuminate the universe, blooming

Hand grasping brushes, poised over the frame

Fill it all in one fragment at a time

Like a colour-by-number activity book

I am a child at my IKEA crafting table

I look up at the world

It smiles and guides my hand

 

Black and white and black and white and black and white and

 

Purple

 

I exist in the unknown space between nothing and creation

Do I have to know who I am?

I exist in technicolour.

Zenny (Alex Rich) is an 18-year-old genderfluid, queer and neurodivergent poet, writer and theatre-maker, intrigued by existentialism and how the world is woven together. They have previously been featured in QUT Glass and ScratchThat Magazine.