Period Romance

The color of the river. An Atlantic, tempest bay.

A hue that I cannot discern from blue or green or grey.

The color I would sew a patchwork quilt to wrap you in.

In color I will dream of you, of books and pens and gin.

We'd talk about Jane Austen and how my brother died.

The secrets I’d preserved in jars, screwed up and terrified.

And when I'd fin’lly take them out and let you have a look

-my jar of secret fireflies, the pages of my book-

I'd seek to foster in your eyes a spark, a glint, a glow.

A flash of recognition light that only I would know.

But all I'd see from where I stood, the crashing of a wave,

The mists of dreary English moors, the moss upon a grave.

Only color sheltered there, the intimacies done.

I’d show you too much of myself, fly too close to the sun.

If life were like the books I read that period would end.

We’d kiss on apple blossom streets, the lesson comprehend.

There's beauty in another kind of turning of the screw,

Delicious as a poisoned fig, tormented pas de deux.

Fictive fiddleheads unfurl, you've every right to doubt me.

I'll always have a touch of Emma Bovary about me.

Never be the first to speak, the wall, don't ever breach it.

Best to dream about perfection than attempt and never reach it.

My heart unlikely to be touched, like bittersweet that's dried.

In the end that's more romantic than a failure if we tried.

Yet there's one color haunts me and I see it in my dreams.

The patchwork quilt I'd sew, another life stitched in the seams.

The color of the river. An Atlantic, tempest bay.

The color of the truth if I was brave enough to say.