Resilience is Periwinkle Blue

My mother, the artist

Painted within me

A kaleidoscope of burning colors

A proud symphony

Elegant white daisies

Suffused in a timeless daze

A poetic cloudless painting

Your brush sculpts a mountain range

Everywhere I traveled

I sought evidence of your presence

I was but a grey cloud

Orphaned in adolescence

Burned cigarette holes

Where ‘x’ marks the spot

Those nights were the most profoundly sad

Before the phoenix's going gets got

Suffice it to say that without the memory

Of her broken and beautiful colors

I may have died a pointless death

Like many orphaned others

I was nothing without your rose soft love

A smooth small rock on a black dull beach

You gave me permission to be the rising sun

Smiling above as the velvet whales breech

On this sun-drenched morning I stand eight feet tall

On all the lessons you taught me

From the early days of pink candy and gloss

To our final walk by the misty sea

My cherished preserving quality

You made sure I learned that day

My silver glinted resilience in

Always seeing beyond the grey

Your memory is sculpted in the form of:

Scarlet studded cheeks, gauzy pale veil for skin

Shape shifting iris, furry amber brow

Reflected on my face, carved replica, your kin

I remember our silken lavender pillows

Oatmeal grey flannel sheet

Smiles over strawberry banana splits

Bubble-gum pink stained teeth

As the clock struck death

Your complexion: milky, blue-grey eyes vacant

Whisper of a youthful smile

The most lovely patient

You taught me resilience

To fight for even failure and fall

The void was filled with independence and strength

But mother, my dear, I still wait for your call

Yet without all the loss

I'd be a ghost, too

This experience gave me a fingerprint

A mind as strong as you

I am a creature to whose spirit I am colorblind

But they say beneath my exterior you may find

Blood red for my limbs, my muscles, and liver

Petal pink for my nerves, my toes, my shiver

I have purple in my back, ice blue in my spine

Sepia tones borders all the hard lines

My soft moon face, is a portrait in silver

Charcoal grey wisps in lace around my fingers

And finally, my heart, the engine of my soul

Radiates sparks brightly dripping in gold