Things I'd Share, If Asked

Thing’s I’d Share, If Asked

If you gave me your hand

I’d run the tips of your fingers

over the crater on my shin

where the mountain chipped me

If I could give you something

I’d give you blue

A sought after and illusive blue

A blue where the sky slips into the sea like an afterthought

A blue that cuts acres of golden fields clean in half

A blue which pushes peaks into submission and off the deep end

If I could give you green, I wouldn’t

It is something of a birth rite

I rubbed green into my eyes

with the heels of my hands

to safely assume

I am my mother’s child

If I could follow you anywhere I’d follow you walking

Far from blond fields and

sunflowers whose heads hang heavy with frost

Just to wander amongst crowds of people who weave together

then part ways like schools of fish

Gliding across sidewalks that gulp heat waves greedily

and spit it all out out when the pitter patter of our feet

skittering across the pavement confuses it,

as though we were rain

It cracks the cement open in a yellow fever

and men swing open their windows to smoke

and my hair turns to straw

If I could go anywhere

it would be dancing

in the old prison

The courtyard is drowned orange and

I like to wear the slip dress

that my friend cut me out of another one

It blushes scarlet red

all over me like a wild poppy

If I could leave myself anywhere

I’d leave myself in the middle of the bridge

Observing passerby’s with the detached discernment

of a cat on a windowsill

Examining the houses

tanned and taut like leather

hung out to dry over the river

in a determined sort of crookedness

that inspires admiration

and in the good spirit of a midnight swim

they slide placidly into indigo waters

The way crumbs glide off of a plate;

Almost domestic, almost lucid

It is only from on the bridge that you can catch the moon bloat

and tip over on its side like spilt milk

that the glittering river laps up

It is a dropped pinball with

an equal potential for suspension or buoyancy

that happened to escape like a sigh

My eyes follow faithfully

the apparition of the koi fish, albino and iridescent

that flopped out of the sky on a childish whim

It darts cleverly between hallucinated neighborhoods

that shimmer as tricks of the light often do

All the while being trailed by the blackness,

a blackness that follows it around like a road

A road that can only lead back to where it came from

It is precisely here that I fend for myself,

fading between silver linings

and the relative safety

of dilating shadows