Quotes from Pick a Colour

by Souvankham Thammavongsa

People in love are boring, if you want to know the truth. But I don’t tell her that.

They are all the same. All love stories are the same. You meet, and that’s it. Heartbreak can take years, splinting, cracking, flickering. The kinds of questions that form and turn back in on you before splitting out in all directions to explain why and how. Love doesn’t have an explanation. Heartbreak, you don’t need to prove. No one else has it and it always belongs to you. Forever yours. Love is actually not reliable. You have to depend on someone else to say they feel it too. And even when they do, you can’t be inside to see the truth of that.

Beauty marks have meaning to us Susans. We read them like tarot cards. One near the lip means you’re a talker. One on the eyelid means you will spend a lot of time sleeping in this life because to see it the eyelid has to be closed. One near the tear duct either means you will make other people cry about you or you will cry about other people. Sometimes you’re born with a beauty mark, other times they just appear suddenly. I know someone who got hers removed, but a few years later it appeared on her son’s face. You can’t escape them. They reveal things about you to us whether you want us to know or not, and we know what’s destined for you.

It’s a relief, really, not to be anything to anyone. If he leaves me, he’s supposed to. He isn’t mine. There weren’t promises made. If he doesn’t come home, I don’t have to think of where he’s been and with whom. If he mentions someone pretty, I don’t have to ask if I am too. I can look how I want, and can love that myself.