Blue

Was it April? I’d moved into that drab place
up Maple and you—remember this?—
came over with wine, with oysters, even,
snagged from the fish market past the canal.
Can you see it? I can:

We’ve spread our feast on the bare boards,
not a stick of furniture in there, no table
for any of it. Spring fingers of sunlight
go probing, lengthening, stippling
until all the tall windows blank out blue.

Remember how our bodies reached
and touched and tasted—arms, hands,
lips, how our limbs entangled
on the hardwood stretch of floor, how
our murmurs, then cries gave us back
their muted echoes from the high dusty
moldings of the ceiling and drifted down?

How the moments became one moment,
how they made one place where we
stepped out of time.

                           Too much later, how
blue time rushed in and mauled us,
holding us in its cruel jaw. Drove into us
the cruel blue of its tooth.

This poem was featured in Volume 2, Issue 2. Click here to explore other pieces from this issue.