Color- A New Poem.
My thoughts have been emerging most easily in poems, lately. Here's a new one.
Color
Stop,
she said.
The dog might bite you.
but I walked through the door
anyway
as softly as I could
and I stood there
and I waited.
It always makes me catch my breath
an error
a step where I shouldn't have made one.
He watches the tiniest muscles
in their faces.
A flex in the jaw,
love and desire in the flaring of a nostril.
I look at his hands,
a ripple of muscles and tendons
I see unbearable sorrow.
We try to be brave and good.
I want to flip tables.
I want to burn the house down.
I will hate the day that I can't hear his laugh.
For now, I stop and listen,
as though from across the galaxy:
I hear it.
She sat across from me,
tapping her chin with her pen.
In our culture, we wear black to show we are suffering,
she told me.
And yes — we wore color, it's true
Bits of color under tall trees.
But oh- how we were suffering.