There isn’t just one shade of love

Many shades of love aren’t one color only

Love is a kaleidoscope of shades

Not just one solid color or form

 

Red is usually associated with healthy love

Yet claret, the color of red wine, can be seen as lust

Lustful love isn’t all there is for healthy love

It’s not all just heated whispers and the squeaking of a bed

 

Pink can blossom for innocent love

Tea rose pink is innocent like the blush of new love

New love is beautiful in its own way

With soft giggles and quick, flustered kisses 

 

There are many shades of red

And these shades can mean different things

Especially with the different loves

With various degrees of denominations

 

Ruby red, a famed jewel shade

Could stand for the ever playful friend love

The brilliant shade can give way to many things

From the one sided crushes on best friends to the friend soulmates

 

With all the “Here, have my food”’s, to the “Take care!”’s that are filled to the brim with love

An unbreakable bond can form 

One that is full of loud laughs and wide, bright grins

Much like a moonlit night of dancing unashamedly 

 

Crimson holds passion and a deep understanding of love

It is fresh and bold yet unabashedly strong

It’s a love full of loud “I love you”’s and the most beautiful confessions at dim candle lit dinners

It can be an unstoppable tide or a slow trickle that turns into a wondrous flood 

 

Candy apple red is playful yet stern, just for siblings

It’s the moments of “You’re an idiot, but I love you”

And “you’re dumb but it’s okay, I still love you and your dumbness” 

Siblings fight and simmer like how a candy apple must be formed by hardening candy

Yet their love runs deeper than the Mariana Trench and is sweeter than any candy

 

Pet love of all healthy kinds is like fuchsia

Playful and ever loyal to the ones the pets love

Dogs rest their heads in one’s lap and caress their hands with the ever gentle ministrations of their panting breath

Cats meow quietly and weakly paw at their hands in order to be petted

And the room is filled, along with the loved one’s chest, with an ever pleased purr

 

Yet nothing can prepare one for maroon 

Occasionally, love can fade like how twilight fades to night

Maroon shows that darkened loss of a spark 

It can easily be different interests that cleave people apart

Like how one prefers to spend their free time with video games and books or football games and fake news

It can even be humor that drives that divide

Dry or morbid, it can start that realization in one way or another 

 

Oxblood can stand for the most terrifying love of all

Abusive and unhealthy love

The dark and scary suspense of how the world may be shifted and turned against one

This blood shade of abusive hits has no love written behind them

 

All of the slurs, hits, manipulations, and threats can make one sniffle and shrink

Bridges to the other shades could collapse because this one, dark shade

The only way to overcome it is to believe in your own unique shade

As well as to have faith in other shades