Red

"Come up with every possible way to describe something as 'red,' without using the word itself."



--
The color of guts, not golden glory
The shade of a sailor's warning sky
An icy cold cola can
Arizona's shimmering heat
The flush of blood to your face
Bitten lips
The color that hazes your vision in rage
Summer tomatoes
Wild apples on the roadside
Ripe tart cherries
-
Powdered cinnabar
Drugstore lipsticks
Crimson
Scarlet
Vermilion
Don't eat that color of berries
Don't touch the stove when it's that color
Dying embers of a fire
Sunset glow in the north
Wildfire on the horizon
-
Stop!
The safety's off
Blood dripping from fresh meat
The color of ground paprika
A good pasta sauce
Strawberry stain on your fingers
The balance for blue and yellow
The middle of black and white
Skin laid back
Muscle exposed
-
Warning sign
Stains of iron in the water
Mark of iron in the soil
Clay along the riverbank
Color of a thunderbird's judgement
East on a medicine wheel
Fire in a circle of elements
Bright in life, dark in death
Color of desire
Cherry cordial in a glass
-
The luckiest color
Bravery and victory's banner
The inside of a bear's mouth
A dragon's tongue unfurled
A child's favorite crayon
Sticky candy remnants you can't hide from Mom
Temple robes in Tibet
The color of fertility
The hide of horses of War
The paint on a cherry Mustang
-

Author's Note: I thought 50 was probably good enough, although there are lots more if you try variations on themes like food, religion, etc. What a very meditative exercise in exploring your associations with a color, especially since I'm using a lot of red and white in a current book.

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