I
Blue
Blue
Her signature color
It followed her
Swam around her like smoke.
She was so many shades-
The pale of a robin's egg
The rippled cool of a lake-
Which one did she favor?
In the end it was
A blue drinking glass
Easily dropped to the floor-
A thousand lethal stars
In a blue tile sky.
Perhaps it frightened her
To watch the sky fill up with red.
Or was she only grateful
Not to be blue anymore?
II
The Dance
He wants to hold a woman,
A real woman,
Not the ones he buys sometimes.
He wants to be married to someone
Someday.
For now he'll settle for a dance partner
And anyone will do-
He needs to feel her hand on his shoulder,
The small of her back beneath his palm.
A brief moment when the empty space
Around him is filled with her perfume.
But no one bothered to tell him
The Thorazine Shuffle
Is his complete repetoire now
And that's a dance he has to do alone.
III
Schizophrenia in Technicolor
He likes to talk about
His life as a roofer
Years ago.
He laughs when he describes
How fast he could climb
Up shaky ladders
With bundles of shingles on his back
And how he pounded nails for hours
In the hot sun.
Until the day the colors came,
And changed his life forever.
They ran like liquid arrows-
Down the ladder,
Across the parking lot,
Up the steps of the elementary school.
And he didn't mean any harm-
He was just following the colors-
But the pretty little teacher
Behind the big desk
Couldn't see the colors,
And couldn't help but clutch
At the pearl buttons at her throat
As he frantically outlined in chalk
The invisible rainbow
On her floor. |
Submission Name: Soldiers of Every Day Wars
