They feel so real.
The letters, I mean.
The numbers too.
Music on certain days.

They swirl around constantly
Coming in and out of focus
But always there
Always the same color
Always the same feeling
Always…. Alive.

That’s what makes it strange, doesn’t it?
Numbers are just squiggles on a page,
Letters only there to make words.
But try telling that to a little girl starting preschool
Watching the boy next to her pick up a red crayon
And scratch it on the surface of the number 3.
But 3 is yellow, everyone knows that.
Not a neon, but soft, like overcooked egg yolk or Peeps on Easter.
And he is wrong, he is so very wrong, he doesn’t understand
Why doesn’t he understand that blue is too dark and cold
For a cheerful and thoughtful number like 3
Blue is for 8, but only in royal because 8 is, well, royally dramatic
And for 10 in navy because he is practical, but approachable.

Wait. Numbers don’t have genders. And they certainly don’t have personalities.
And why do they have to be a specific color?
Try asking that of a second grader in a new classroom
Telling her teacher as nicely as possible that the alphabet characters
Depicted on the posters on the walls
Do not properly represent what the letters are really like.
A isn’t a superhero- he’s overconfident and a little lazy
The guy who no one can stand but no one will tell him
Because he’s just popular.
And red by the way.
Closer to maroon now I think.
K is shy and girly, bookish and introverted,
A softspoken, imaginative blonde who sits alone in the library at lunch
Happy in a world of her own.
Pastel pink, with a faded shimmer that’s hard to explain.
She’s a lot like 6.
L and J are similar- I’d say college age
Smart, handsome, and they know it
Best friends who were nerdy in high school,
But hit a growth spurt and suddenly grew up
L is a nice guy, a listener, a thinker, a poet
And J is too, deep inside, but the compliments have gotten to his head
And he is an egomaniac who likes breaking hearts.
J is denim-colored. L is sunshine filtering through a sheer blue curtain.
Lowercase y is the color of champagne, unexplainably beautiful and mysterious, but cold inside
Lowercase g (orange sorbet) is jealous, but so bubbly and outgoing you’d never know
I is boring and the texture of spilled ink, B has secrets, M is a leader, P is republican, U is religious, E wears glasses, H makes too many sacrifices, 5 is orange and significant for reasons I don’t know, 2, 4, and d are all shades of purple and too sweet for my taste, and I haven’t even begun to figure out how to explain the music yet.
God, it all sounds like nonsense. You must be making it up,
Your imagination is just on overdrive,
But they don’t change. They only get clearer.
So I stopped correcting the colors.
I ignored the numbers, the letters, the personalities.
Pushed them to the back of my mind.
But when I accidentally mentioned it years later,
I heard it explained- no, named- for the first time.
Synesthesia.
Confusion of the senses.
It’s a neurological condition where different parts of my brain mix together a little bit.
It happens in a lot of people actually.
They can taste sounds, see music, visualize feelings.
It’s not contagious.
It’s just a little weird.
And I think I’m finally starting to understand it.