The Color That Stayed

The first lie I learned to recognize tasted like burnt copper.

It wasn’t the words that gave it away—it was the aftertaste. A sharp, metallic film that coated the back of my tongue whenever someone said something they didn’t mean. I was young then, sitting at a kitchen table that smelled like overcooked rice and dish soap, watching my mother smile at someone she didn’t trust. Her voice had sounded warm.

Her aura tasted like rust.

Back then, the world was loud with color. Not in the way people think—bright reds and blues splashed across surfaces—but in the way everything felt. Joy fizzed like citrus on my tongue. Grief settled heavy and damp, like wool soaked in rain. Anger snapped like static, bitter and electric. And truth—truth was always clean. Clear. Like cold water.

I didn’t know what to call it then.

Now I do.

Now I also know it doesn’t last.

The first thing prison took was silence.

Not actual silence—there was always noise. Doors slamming. Men shouting. Metal on metal. But the inner kind, the kind that lets you feel anything clearly—that disappeared fast. Replaced by a constant hum that flattened everything into sameness.

The second thing it took was color.

At least, that’s what I thought at first.

It didn’t vanish all at once. It drained. Slowly. Like something leaking out of the world through cracks no one else could see. The citrus brightness of laughter dulled into something chalky. Anger lost its sharp edge and turned thick, like chewing on pennies. Even grief—once deep and endless—thinned out until it barely registered.

After a while, most people tasted like nothing at all.

Just… gray.

Flat. Dry. Empty.

Men talked, laughed, fought—but underneath it, there was nothing. No depth. No current. Just survival moving through a body.

I stopped paying attention.

There was nothing left to taste.

Until the day I noticed it.

It came from a man everyone avoided. Kept to himself. Didn’t talk much. Sat at the edge of the yard like he was waiting for something that wasn’t coming.

I only looked his way because the air shifted.

Subtle. Almost not there.

But it was enough.

Warmth.

Faint—but unmistakable.

I turned my head slightly, not enough to draw attention. Watched him from the corner of my eye as another inmate approached, loud and restless, filling the space with forced energy.

“You think you’re better than everyone, sitting over here like that?” the man said.

The quiet one didn’t respond right away. Just looked at the ground. His shoulders tightened, then dropped.

When he finally spoke, his voice was low. Steady.

“I’m just tired.”

That was it.

Three words.

No performance. No defense. No mask.

And suddenly—

Gold.

It bloomed so softly I almost missed it. A warmth that spread through the air like sunlight through closed eyelids. It didn’t hit sharp or loud like the other colors used to. It unfolded. Gentle. Certain.

It tasted like something I hadn’t known I missed.

Not sweet. Not bright.

True.

The other man scoffed, muttered something, walked off. The moment passed. The gold faded as quickly as it came.

But I felt it.

Clear as anything.

After that, I started paying attention again.

Not to the noise. Not to the routines.

To the spaces in between.

At first, it was rare. A flicker here. A whisper there.

A man admitting, under his breath, that he missed his daughter.

Gold.

Another one laughing too loudly, then going quiet, saying, “I don’t even remember what I was like before this.”

Gold, softer this time. Fading quicker.

It never lasted long.

Most of the time, people stayed gray. Easier that way. Safer. You don’t survive in a place like this by opening anything real. You build layers. Filters. You say what you’re supposed to say. You feel what you’re allowed to feel.

Or you feel nothing at all.

Gray became the default.

Predictable. Manageable.

Dead.

I started craving the gold.

Not in a desperate way. Not at first.

Just noticing when it appeared. Waiting for it. Wondering if it would come again.

It didn’t behave like the other colors used to. It didn’t respond to emotion the way I expected. Not to happiness. Not to hope. Not even to pain.

Only to something else.

Something sharper.

Cleaner.

Truth.

Not the kind people say out loud easily. The kind that slips out when they’re too tired to hold it back.

The kind that costs something.

Weeks passed. Maybe months. Time doesn’t move right in here.

The gold became rarer.

Or maybe people were just getting better at hiding.

I started to wonder if I was losing it. If whatever part of me could feel anything beyond gray was finally shutting down like everything else.

It would make sense.

This place has a way of sanding down the edges of who you are until there’s nothing left to catch on anything real.

I told myself it didn’t matter.

It was easier not to feel.

Easier not to notice what was missing.

The last time I felt it before everything changed, it came from someone I didn’t expect.

Me.

It was near sunset. You could tell by the way the light shifted through the bars—less harsh, more… tired. The yard was quieter than usual. People drifting back inside, conversations trailing off into nothing.

I stayed where I was.

Sat on the edge of the concrete, staring out past the fence at a sky I couldn’t see the color of anymore.

I tried to remember what it used to look like.

I couldn’t.

That bothered me more than anything.

Not the gray. Not the emptiness.

The forgetting.

I exhaled slowly, pressing my palms together, grounding myself in the only thing that still felt real—pressure, breath, the weight of my own body.

For a long time, I said nothing.

Because I knew.

I knew what it took.

And I’d been avoiding it.

Same as everyone else.

“I’m scared.”

The words came out quieter than I expected. Rough. Unpracticed.

They hung in the air like something fragile.

No one was around to hear them. No one to react. No one to judge.

Still—

I felt it.

A flicker at first.

Then more.

“I don’t know who I am without all of this.”

It pressed deeper this time. Into something I hadn’t let myself touch.

“I don’t know if there’s anything left.”

And there it was.

Not from outside.

From within.

Gold.

Not faint. Not fleeting.

Full.

It spread through me slowly, like warmth returning to hands that had been numb too long. It wasn’t overwhelming. It didn’t demand anything.

It just… was.

Steady. Certain.

Alive.

For a moment, the gray didn’t disappear—but it didn’t feel absolute anymore. Like something underneath it had always been there, waiting.

I closed my eyes, letting it settle.

Breathing it in.

Not chasing it. Not questioning it.

Just… allowing it.

When I opened my eyes, the sky was still the same.

Colorless.

Unchanged.

But it didn’t feel empty anymore.

I rested my gaze there a little longer, not searching for anything new—just noticing what had been there all along.

And for the first time since everything went gray, the air tasted like gold.

I realized then—

it wasn’t the world that had lost its color.

It was me who had stopped telling the truth.