You scrunch up your eyes,
those robin’s egg blues, 
shells pieced together 
with membranes of memory. 
You pretend not to see me, 
staring past, into streetlights.
I recognize those bitter blues 
watching through their winter windows. 
I notice their cold corner glances 
and exit doors open and drafty. 
Once, you wanted me, so badly  
and turned me over with 
your loving eyes, like blue 
jellyfish in crash-down, drag-out 
sea waves. Now, your eyes 
float over me, detached sky blue. 
They aren’t the blue of blueberries, 
or blue jeans, but Easter egg pastel 
blues you can blink into two.  
Broken open, they present 
their sweetness, little golden treasures, 
trinkets I am not allowed to keep. 
The star-flecks in your eyes,
I’ve been close enough to wish upon. 
Strapped into a parachute, I once fell 
in love through your sky eyes. 
Now, I must fall out of it. 
No one, not even the world
knows how long I have awaited you. 
Blues have always suited me. 
Blue is the world’s favorite color, 
soothing, all encompassing. 
Consider earth’s  blue-toned 
oceans under vast sea skies. 
My eyes are blue, too. Have you noticed?  
They replay our cornflower fantasies. 
They flicker candle-flame blue. 
Under my eyelashes, thin as charred
matchsticks, my blue eyes 
flash their gas flames, blow-torch blue.
I know I can be too much for you. 
I know my eyes are heavy
with absence. Their delicate 
nerve branches tangle 
near the horizons of your sea-stares.  
Lately, you make me feel like a sea hag. 
I drag myself up, slovenly,  
out of bed with my blues. 
If I am the one left holding onto love,
a love which made me feel true to myself—
I ask you: aren’t I the lucky one? 
                        

You wince in the moment. 
Turn on your tipsy lamp.
The doctor says that your IT band
needs some light stretching. 
Your body ages before its time. 
Your face skips a stone into mine. 
You are home, somewhat safe, 
and sound for a singular night. 
When you were a child, lithe and spry, 
you climbed up into the closet, 
found the stack of sheets, 
brought one down, and folded it
over a rope tied between 
the closet door and the door 
to your room,  constructing something 
like a Bedouin tent between doors,
each end tied to the brass knobs. 
The knobs were polished 
by the sweat and oil of your palm, 
like genie lamps. I appeared, 
magically, outside your room, 
knocking and asking if you were  
hungry or thirsty. I handed you 
plates of golden macaroni and cheese 
through the barely cracked open door.
If you were to widen it any further,
everything would collapse. The tent 
stretched across your desert dreams, 
1, 000 miles undisturbed, hourglassed, 
singing dunes of your sleep, 
your body’s funneled breath 
blown through the bottleneck. 
The snared skin of the tent 
was like snow leopard skin 
pegged with push pins to the dark,
tied to the four walls of wind. 
If you have to die on the floor 
like an animal in a tent city,
where I can no longer reach you
with my offerings of food and drink, 
if I am forced to leave you alone 
to wolf up food pantry handouts,
at least savor this night to consider 
there is a place to come back to 
if you choose recovery.