When Blue Seemed Like a Good Idea
I’ve never been good at opening hearts
or talking to strangers or simply making my own bed. Some might call this sky blue, but they wouldn’t be from around here.
Will you move in with me? I asked her before lattice and fencing, on the stoop with cigarettes and soft breeze. If you paint the damn thing, she said, and laughed.
She’d left her husband for a bad tattoo
and a grungy rock band. She left me too.
On that ladder, giddy with a color from Miami
or some old cartoon, I was shouting to the street.
The fence was too low, and the dog ran away. The flowers never got planted, though we’d made a list. If you’re like my neighbors, you’re shaking your head and calling it an Eyesore. I got a tattoo
to match hers. Working long hours, warping permanence into a blurred design that could mean anything. I put up the lattice after she
left. Spring on its way. Have you been to Miami?
I could tell you why she left, but when I look
back, I still see her bare arms rising toward me when I came down the ladder and hugged her
in blue, the reckless music of our cartoon laughter.
Life itself can make our eyes sore.
I don’t know much, but fading is a part of it. I’m not climbing back up there
to scrape and prime and start again.