Green Is The Ugliest Color

Green Is The Ugliest Color
He tells you that he’s happy for you
Straight to your face, means about a third
The rest he buries in his chest
Where it ferments like something left to rot
Your promotion hit him like a cold front moving through
He smiled — God, he smiled so well —
Then went home and stared at the ceiling
Like it owed him something

The wanting just arrives
Like weather, like instinct
Like every good thing happening
To everyone but him
All the time, forever

Green is the ugliest color
Wearing it to every party, every funeral, every win
Green is the ugliest color
Eating him alive from somewhere just under the skin
He doesn’t want your life exactly
Just the parts that make his hollow
Green
Mean and quiet
Following him home

She’s beautiful the way he always wanted someone to see
Successful in the field he abandoned when the fear got loud
He follows her online the way a storm follows a coastline
Not to destroy — just circling
Just endlessly, exhaustingly proud
Of something that isn’t his
The worst part isn’t wanting what she has
The worst part is he can’t decide
If he wants her life
Or just wants his
To finally feel like enough
From the inside

The gap between the lives
Gets wider every scroll
Every highlight reel a mirror
Showing him what envy stole
From his own damn life
While he watched someone else’s

Here’s the part nobody says out loud:
Envy isn’t really about you
It’s a finger pointing inward
At the unlived life
The unchosen door
The version of himself he locked in a room at twenty-two
And told to keep it down
Every person he resents
Is just a mirror, slightly tilted
Showing him the shape
Of what he’s been
Too afraid
To want
For himself

So he keeps attending everyone else’s victories
Keeps that smile calibrated
Keeps the green
Pressed down under the collar
Where it doesn’t show
Much
Where it doesn’t show
Too much
Where it
Barely
Shows
At all