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Beige is the color of the linen dresses my mother wore in the summer. Her skin would glow in the unforgiving heat, and I spent a lot of my time staring at her, in envy of her beauty. How could the bland color of waiting rooms and bedsheets compliment her in such a luminous way? I couldn’t wait for her to wear those dresses because it usually meant she was going to take me and my sister to the park, where I could brag to all of the kids that the woman, just over by the tire swing with the dark shades, long curly hair, beautiful bronze skin, and infectious smile was my mother.
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Poem by Annjie Houston
Artwork by Sasha Natchaev
Beige reminds me of something in my mother that I will never see again...before cancer would take my father from her and turn her into a sunken shell of her old radiant self. Before she stopped smiling and started surviving…
If I let it, this neutral and mundane color can elicit an array of emotions from me. So I stay vigilant of trips down beige memory lane, lest I too lose myself in waves of wistful nostalgia for a time I never fully appreciated.
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