Here, the room reflects my winter mood.
Memory:
that colour that drifts back,
and I let it.
It reminds me of what I missed.
Still, I feel resolve.
I am enough, blue and all.
Blue flows into everything.
It does not ask permission;
it slips in like running water.
Reflective, serene, calm,
cool, steady, and quietly seductive.
Blue arrives on the walls, the air, my skin,
even the corners of thought,
laid out on a platter of memory,
each shade offered, served, savored.
I cannot sleep tonight.
My mind becomes the artist who paints clouds,
shifting between floating and fury,
softness and storm,
always moving
toward the old ache,
toward a lover long gone
if he was ever really here.
I remember the man and his colours,
his strong arms inked in navy,
his children’s names along the curve of muscle.
What I remember most is the blue.
He was shades of indigo.
He was the kind of blue that lingers
even after morning,
like ai‑iro, Japanese indigo,
deep, calm, enduring,
the blue of ceramics and kimono,
intimate, reflective, alive,
laid before me on the platter of memory.
Outside, the winter sky is cornflower,
pale, wanting.
I feel pale too, veins bright against the cold.
It offers no warmth, only suggestion,
a pastel smudge beyond the glass.
The wind nudges me with small kicks
as if to say: You are alive. Do something about it.
Later, I will go to the water.
I will stand in it.
Its clarity will lie.
It will look like glass,
but I will call it blue.
Mussel-blue lips will find my toes,
gentle and aching,
like something that once loved me
and cannot quite stop.
His blue sat in and occupied my heart
a long, long while.
And maybe that is enough
to carry the blue
and be carried by it
with quiet strength, grace, and desire.
I am cerulean,
open, bright,
the clear blue of endless possibility.
I still see possibilities
because that
is a box of blues,
laid out like platters,
flowing still,
like running water.