Wolfgang's jawline.

Colors

Kala is warm, Wolfgang thinks, and when he feels her heat he understands why men write poetry.

Kala is sunsets and marigolds, ripe mangoes that dripped down her fingers in the summer when she was young and the sweltering sun made everything just this side of too hot. She’s the red of the fires she never says she loves but (not so) secretly does, volatile and unexpected and unassuming until something sparks that life (and death) within her, and yet she’s also the soft pale yellow of the candles she lights around her gods every morning, praying for peace and understanding and connection and love. She’s the gold of the thin chain around her neck, warmed by the heat of her skin and the love of her heart that pumps crimson blood to its surface, and the radiance of her smile that could light up the world entire.

Such a stark contrast to himself, he thinks, such an absolute opposite it seems like a grand cosmic joke that they should have found each other and fit so perfectly in the spaces they each had to fill.

Wolfgang is the grey of the concrete walls he built around himself. He is the blue of the ice in his heart and his soul and his veins, the deep charcoal of a truly empty home with no one to turn on the light. He is the black of his shoes and his jacket and the impenetrable darkness that’s been within him since his earliest memories, the one he only knows the edges of but not the size or the depth for fear of falling in and not climbing out.

But then he looks at her, and she looks at him, and she smiles or takes his hand or pulls him in for a kiss before continuing on with their lives with fingers entwined and hearts beating in symphony, and he thinks that maybe, just maybe, the pale yellow of candlelight has been lit inside him, and it will chase away the frost.