Sometimes your light shines so bright that it blinds people from seeing who you really are.

-Shannon L Alder

Sometimes, when the lights get too bright; when the colours become too vivid, I wish I was blind. I wish for my world to be plunged into the relief of darkness so I wouldn’t have to stand there, waiting for the beams of colour to go away- or at least fade.

But only sometimes.

Every other second, when I see those beautiful symphonies of gold or fierce dashes of red, it takes my breath away. It makes me cry tears of sheer awe.

Especially times like this.

I’m heading to my favourite place- my grandmother’s house.

She doesn’t live there anymore, obviously, but I simply cannot give it up. She told me to rent it out, or just sell it, but I cannot.

Here is one of the very few places that I don’t see the colours.

No matter how beautiful they are, sometimes I want a plain world. 

Today, it’s raining. This rain is baby blue and soft yellow. It is powdered pink and velvety cream. I like it.

I reach grandma’s house and unlock the door. The clink of the key unlocking the door is metallic silver and harsh blue.

I hang my denim jacket on the hook behind the door and wait for the colours to change.

Grandma’s house is always brown. Sometimes, it’s lighter ochre, sometimes it’s a darker wood. But always brown. Today, it’s practically golden. It stuns me a little. I can feel my eyes burn as my pupils rapidly dilate and contract because of the sudden flashes of gold.

It should fade.

I lean against the door, hand on my chest. My breath comes out in fast puffs and my heart is hammering.

Then it fades. The flashes slow down and my vision is flooded with a soft gold. The fear is still coursing through my veins as I sit down carefully on the rocking chair that never moved.

I associate brown with security and reliability. I don't know why, exactly. Since I was younger, the people I trust would have a voice in all the million shades of brown, or gold.

When my heart stops pounding, I slowly take off my sunglasses. The colours rustle and shimmer, but they don’t fade. With every drop of rain that falls on the glass, the golden hue painting my vision is tinged with dots of soft blues and pinks.

A silver bolt streaks through the gold just as I hear a crack of thunder and lightning splits