Gifting Blue

They assure me I am ready

with my hands dipped in blue.

They tell me that they've been waiting.

I look far beyond

at the horizon and check:

the blue of my fingers is the same

as the blue of the sea,

as where the blue of the sky

meets the blue of me.

I blush and stammer

as the clouds cling themselves wetly

around my upper arms

and glaze the moss a deep shade of phthalo.

It isn't true, I protest, what you think I reveal.

They look at me and tell me to trust my gift,

the one that looks sincerely into my dreams,

the one that catches daybreak when it arrives in the form

of pink fingers gently brushing the tips of mountains.

You take my hands and guide them, gently, towards my paints

towards my plants. I practice inwardly,

meditating on the composition of the firework

of the cornflower. I dip my brush into indigo,

stroke it through cerulean,

tentatively add a dash of magenta,

quickly and fondly flirt with naples yellow.

In the end, I present

them all with a bouquet of cornflowers,

painted and pressed:

a sea of blue

on blue

shivering in the light.