The Sky Forgot Blue

The Sky Forgot Blue

This morning, the heavens wore borrowed gray shoes,

a sepia ceiling that swallowed the views.

The gulls looked like erasers smudging the light,

And Noon took a nap in the middle of the night.

I searched in the puddles for scraps of that hue,

But even the water declined to be blue.

The city hung curtains of smoke over glass.

The sun signed its name with a dull piece of brass.

You texted: “Hold steady. The weather will mend.”

I answered with the color I wished I could send—

a pocket of azure I kept from last spring,

a ribbon of sky from a kite on a string.

I walked with a paint chip deck fanned in my hand,

auditioned the daylight for what it had planned:

Cerulean? Absent. Cobalt? Overdue.

My knuckles turned chapped, and I prayed for a clue.

At last, on a windshield, a raindrop turned true—

a shard of the missing, a whisper of blue.

Another, then dozens, then rivers that ran,

and even the streetlamp remembered the plan.

The clouds unbuttoned; the saffron withdrew;

A robin rehearsed the old turquoise it knew.

I breathed like a window just learning to part,

and painted the rest on the walls of my heart.

Tomorrow may tarnish the palette again,

But I’ll keep a prism for weatherless when—

to split what is dim into honest and clear,

and find the lost blue in the light that is here.