Colors of Permanence

Article by Matthew Kirsten Mendez

What makes this year different?Every year we burn the skies with colors that light up the night. We sear our eyes with different hues, emblazening not just our faces but also our spirits.

But do we ever really ask ourselves, what’s there to be colorful for?

Survival is the primary answer. The red in the gunpowder might be the blood that we shed in fighting this year’s battles. In that sense, life is an endless war.

Victory could be another reason. We have conquered many places a few months back. We paint the skies green like laurel wreaths above all of our heads as winners.

But what about the losses we cut? The failures we made? The defeats and the shame, the wounds and the deaths?

Is the blue in the fireworks the sadness of letting the past go? Is the purple the memories we treat like sacred royalty that we must carry on to the next year in silk and tightening robes? 

The pyrotechnics and the light shows—the grandeur of the celebration slips like ticks in the hands of the countdown clock.

 Ten. Will we ever have a year like this again? Where all the chances teased us like the colors of the rainbow by the waiting firecrackers’ elements.

Nine. Will this next year really be mine? Or will the tick of the time be another false sky, a trick of the night?

Eight. How many more years do I have to wait with all the phony lucky charms I wore and all the bland round fruits I ate.

Seven. The fireworks seem to threaten to look like shooting stars as we watch our wishes be sent to the heavens.

Six. The clock gives faster ticks, like falling into the next twelve months or fifty-two weeks.

Five. At midnight, the whole city is alive. Everyone is waiting for the sky of next year to arrive.

Four. We hear it knocking at the door. The matches are lit and the fireworks start to rise from the floor.

Three. The children shout with glee. Noise is a tradition, they say it makes the bad luck flee.

Two. I inhale before I scream out loud too. 

One. And the fireworks have gone.

 What will make this year different?

Every year we burn the skies with colors that light up the night. But the unchanging night is the color we see before all else comes to life. 

This year and the following years will all be similarly filled with victories and defeats, reds and blues, new lives and deaths. So we need not a celebration of the colors of change but the colors of permanence. How we stay the same across new years.

What will make the following years different? The colors of the fireworks will make it apparent. The endless war will never be put to a stop.

But let the night sky be our character, full of starlike hope, unchanging, and true beyond all searing hues. 

That in itself will be sufficiently worth celebrating. Even every year.