cav bryce
because we are always eating and drinking and consuming the dyes — who cares
BLUE 1 (brilliant blue)
Blue candy is the best. Blue gummy bears, lollipops, Italian ice. Raspberry. And blue raspberries aren’t even real. Whatever. They got me, man. I remember drinking melted ice pop liquid. Drinking the spicy sauce of a frozen blue glow-stick, mom calling poison control, and it’s all fine. No superpowers. No blue glow. I’d do anything to drown the earth in blue, to make blue raspberries real. Sitting in my room at night shoving skittles and gummy bears and ice cream and sucking 13 lollipops at once mixing a beautiful, brilliant blue alchemical potion inside a comically large brew. Crying. Begging for more blue. It seems this food dye causes kidney tumors in mice. That’s fine.
I’ll give you my kidney, really.
I would.
***
RED 40 (ALLURA RED)
I never understood why “red” cars were meant to be “faster”. Boldness. Passion. Whatever. Pharmaceutical companies make their medications certain colors, abiding by the “psychology of color.” I don’t think any of my medications are red. Mostly blue. White. Orange. Yellow. Pink.
I remember learning that uh, the old red dyes were made out of squashed bugs. I was on some field trip. St. Augustine. An old medical center. I remember asking: “How long did it take to saw off his leg, with that thing? Did it hurt? Does it all hurt, for everyone, all the time?” Mom wasn’t there. She was working, always.
Apparently there’s some other fucked up version of Red Dye 40 that is combined with aluminum.
Aluminum. Smoked so much aluminum as a kid. It accelerates nerve sensitivity and hyperactivity in children apparently. Doubt it had any impact on me. Aluminum in my lungs. Microplastics in my balls. 14 medications fighting for ownership over my brain. Aluminum and ground pig feet in my jell-o. Crushed bugs.
I love you, Mom.
I’m sorry.
***
YELLOW #5 (TARTRAZINE)
They did these lab tests on rats. Rats. Always mice, rats. Rest in peace Algernon. They made this configuration where a rat im a room would be given two hallways to access. One with food. One with a morphine drip. And they always chose the morphine, of course they did. Of course they did. Emaciated, crawling. Some bespectacled lab coat hovering above, watching, God watching us, dying, our tongues out. Lapping at the beautiful, tartrazine colored nectar.
All the rats of NIMH, dead and forgotten. Dying addicts. Starved. Mutilated. Vivesected.
Sunsets and sunflowers and summer. Foul. Lemon cake? Foul. Smiley faces and yellow sneakers. Bees. Wasps. It’s in Red Bull I think. Whatever. My organs are all melting, always, forever on the brink of spontaneous combustion.
C16H9N4Na3O9S2. After three hours of exposure, yellow 5 caused damage to human white blood cells in every concentration tested. Cells damaged in the highest concentration were unable to heal themselves.
There was this other lab rat test I think about a lot. The one where they learn to help each other. A rat is trapped in some sick fucked up contraption. It learns how to escape. When a rat who has learned the trick next to another rat, a new one, with both under duress, once free, the learned rat will rush to free this new one. They aren’t friends. They don’t know each other.
I’m just glad Algernon never died a dope fiend. He died with respect. Beautiful, innocent.
Excuse me, I must place tartrazine colored flowers on his grave.
On the grave of us all.
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