My name, to me, is yellow. This is because the letter K is yellow in my brain, therefore it colors the rest of my name, Kelli, in yellow. The number one is blue, the number two is red, and three is green. The song “The Geese of Beverly Road” by my favorite band, The National, […]

My name, to me, is yellow. This is because the letter K is yellow in my brain, therefore it colors the rest of my name, Kelli, in yellow. The number one is blue, the number two is red, and three is green. The song “The Geese of Beverly Road” by my favorite band, The National, is a swirling mix of deep emerald greens and flecks of gold. These colors dance across my mind’s eye, throughout my sub-conscious and conscious, as they come to mind, or are read or seen by me. When I was in college over a decade ago, taking a psychology and sociology class, I learned that I had synesthesia. I sat in a large lecture hall with hundreds of other students, everyone bent over the same survey packet that would evaluate our personalities, our emotional history, our lives and so on — this would help the professor and his assistants sort us out into different studies, which is how we earned credit. As I answered each question (Have you ever experienced depression" Do you remember your childhood fondly") I glanced up and looked at each friend on either side of me — they were pages ahead of me in the survey. I looked back down at my own packet of survey questions...