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Pain is not simple or discrete. It is not homogeneous, straightforward, or consistent. At the same time, it is both enduring and in constant flux; it never goes away and yet somehow it is never possible to shine down a grating white light and stick a pin through the middle of pain so that it can be held down and examined from all angles.

Rather, it bleeds through the body in endless permutations, flaring brightly at a touch and casting flickering shadows in the compression of a muscle. In stillness, it pools like rot or quicksand, and in movement it blares like an unexpected accident, so sharp it barely registers.

The colors of pain are more varied than the human brain is capable of believing. Even I who am so well-acquainted with pain, as soon as it moves or changes I cease to believe in the form it took before. I forget. When the pain I feel is blue and brown like an old bruise, or green and sharp as the smell of limes, I don't believe in the crimson and orange pains of sudden, foolish movement. Primary colors aren't the end of it: the deep dark reds of core muscle fatigue are different than the fresh new slap of pain in the skin or the dull firelight ache of a headache that's settled in for a long stay. There is a pain that is nothing but shadow, and then there is the white hot pain of cold temperatures soaking into the bone through muscle and tendon and skin.

I know that all of these things exist, because I have lived through them and will again, but still, I forget how bright the colors are so quickly. I am over-exposed to the brightness of existence, and so as often as possible my mind chooses blindness; it is blindness to past and future pain, and so I am left with only the present and the colors that inhabit my body in this moment.