Wired in Color—lyrical microfiction series

I do not hear the world as you do.

Its voices bloom in shades,

each word a brushstroke

on the canvas of my mind.

Crimson folds around doubt,

silver steadies certainty,

indigo hides in hesitation,

gold erupts where truth breaks free,

and faint green trembles

when someone deceives themselves.

Crowds flow like rivers of light,

not chaos, but patterns—

a living tapestry of feeling,

threads of emotion weaving stories

no one else can read.

As a child, I thought it a curse.

Children laughed at my visions,

so I learned to hold my colors quietly,

to paint in silence what the world could not see.

Years passed. Silence grew heavy,

pressing against my ribs like stone.

Yet in that quiet, I discovered

the power of my wiring:

to see what many cannot,

to hear the hues between words,

to sense the invisible architecture of truth.

Now I move openly, unafraid.

The marketplace hums in violet urgency,

the subway pulses restless orange,

laughter sparks yellow and drifts into the air.

Every room, every crowd,

becomes a living mural,

each person a color, each gesture a shade.

Language is more than sound.

It is color, it is light, it is resonance.

And I, wired differently,

walk through the world

listening in spectral brilliance,

hearing what many cannot.

©️Lyia Meta 2025

Image by WiX

•The backstory•

I’ve always felt slightly out of step with the world around me. In school, I noticed small things that others overlooked. Over time, I realized why… I don’t hear thoughts the way most people do.

Mine arrive in colors—crimson when doubt brushes close, silver when certainty steadies me.

When people speak, I don’t just hear their words. I see glimmers: a thread of indigo tucked inside hesitation, a burst of gold when truth shines through, faint wisps of green when someone lies to themselves.

In a crowd, I am not lost.

I walk through rivers of light, voices weaving into one another, each carrying shades only I can perceive. The marketplace is a storm of violet urgency. The busy street hums with restless oranges. Even laughter, bright and quick, leaves behind sparks of yellow that dance before fading into the air.

Most people see noise and bodies pressing shoulder to shoulder.

I see a shifting mural, a living tapestry of what they feel, not just what they say.

As a child, I asked many questions. I saw things that didn’t seem to exist for anyone else—strange patterns, shifting shapes, colors that spoke in ways I couldn’t explain. People laughed and told me I was imagining things. So I learned to stay quiet, carrying my perceptions quietly, as though they were private threads of a world only I could touch.

But now, I know better.

I see what many cannot.

I hear what hides between words.

And though it sets me apart, it also makes me whole.

For language is not only sound. It is color. It is light. It is truth revealed in shades.

And I was born to see it.