When you read this, just remember that you are hearing from a girl who believed in a Grey Kind of Love Story far longer than she believed in the exiled Sugarplum who trudged away from the ballet for a career in swapping teeth for silver under pillows near midnight.

This girl, she once prayed for Grey Love Stories the way a little boy prays to catch the soaring leather skin of a Yankee’s homerun hit. White-Knuckled Prayers for Grey Kinds of Love Stories. 

She was a girl who thought that grey was a pretty, little color fitting for a love story. Someone could you love in shades of gray, she said to the No Ones of the night.

She? Well, she once talked for days just to keep from saying the two words that needed her tongue, needed the air outside of her mouth, needed the lobe of a boy who didn’t love her the way they Love One Another Hard in those vampire movies.

…

It’s Over.

Them’s heavy words. Heavy like the bags assembled by the clumsy grocery store clerk who’s prone to packing the gallon of milk with the cans of corn and lentils.

Heavy enough to make you wonder if your tongue can take it.

If your lips might break it.

It’s Over.

Knees shaking against the dashboard, she found the those words somewhere along the rows of houses all drawn on the same architect’s sketch pad.

It’s Over.

Pull Over.

Pull over, pull over, pull over.

…

Girl, you got to find the strength to grab the door handle. Girl, you got to stand beside the car and watch him pull away and realize you still got the dignity, the will, the Know How to Know Better. That you deserve that.

Better.

You Deserve Better.

Girl, I know the way you’ll find it hard to Pull Away. From Him. As he pulls you in and tells you, he always did like the smell of the lavender shampoo you used in your hair.

But Grey, if you cannot see her yet, she’s the Maybe’s, the Some Other Time’s, the I Can’t Make It’s, the Promise I’ll Make It Up To You’s.

All clustered into One Grand Excuse for why he never called and why you stood in those heels that gave you blisters far before you ever got to dancing and waited for the car that never came.

It’s like a person who will tell you Every Day that they might think to love you One Day.

And there you’ll go, marching off to join the crows of girls who ache for the One Day. Perched up on the fence for that One Day, as if they were waiting for Elvis to appear from his dressing room.

But you are not a One Day Girl. You are not a Maybe Girl. You are an Every Day Girl and you need to know it so.

…

Girl, keep the grey for the dyed threads of your chunky sweaters. Keep the grey for the furs of the mouse that always grows restless beneath your refrigerator around 10pm. Keep the grey for the days that demand rain boots, but don’t let grey lend you a love story.

Grey just aint a color made for telling love stories. No girl wants to say, “And then the grey seeped in.”

And Girl, if you got to scream, Scream Loud. If you got to cry, Cry Buckets. If you got to run, Try Barefoot. And, if you got to find a way to wash him away, Then Wash. Hard.

You sit in the middle of your bathtub and pour out every squirt of lavender shampoo if you got to.

If you never want to find Another to tangle that scent of you in their fingers, fine. Leave that then. But leave all the same.

Leaving knowing One Day you’ll look up. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. But One Day, you’ll look up and it’ll be Yellow. All Kinds of Terra Cotta Gold & Tie Dye. With no trace of grey.

You’ll have left that color for your sweaters. For the days that demand rain boots.

And your love stories, they’ll be Salmon Pink. Candy Apple Red. All sorts of Deep Magenta tangled with hints of Navajo White.