I don’t know what to do with this shade of blue. It’s sticky. It leeches to my fingers and now the cherries taste funny and I cannot eat them. Instead I eat this blue by the spoonful. It feels like cotton, like wool on my tongue and tastes like iron and honeysuckle: pain. My pain. Yours. It doesn’t fill my stomach but my chest. When I speak, a blue vapor escapes my lips and people look at me funny, as if they know. It is the blue of howl, dusk, a faucet dripping when you are too tired to turn it off. Concrete floors. Clouds. Collars. Creek. Echo. Funk. Somewhere, somewhere between a swell of ocean and the blue of lips. The seam of a uniform. Fading delphinium. Almost but not quite Parker’s bluebird, wavering along a minor chord. If I listen long enough it dissolves into a pale, pale grey, and thins, like a purse of lips, into grey lines that cage themselves around me. And I have only myself to blame.
Melissa I. Hassard
***
Recently accepted and published at vox poetica. Thank you so very much, to Annmarie Lockhart of vox poetica.
Permanent link to work here.
February 7, 2013 at 5:04 pm
If I listen long enough it dissolves into a pale, pale grey, and thins, like a purse of lips, into grey lines that cage themselves around me
Wonderful
February 7, 2013 at 7:00 pm
Thanks so much.
February 8, 2013 at 10:06 am
Such exquisite sadness, breathtakingly beautiful, eerily calm in its hopelessness.
My only wish is that everyone could hear the author read this poem as I have. It will break your heart.
Congratulations
February 8, 2013 at 10:26 am
What stands in stark contrast, from that day to this, is the amount of love that has blown into my life like warm spring breeze. Love you, Sheryl, and thank you for these words.
February 8, 2013 at 11:07 am
Reblogged this on 20 Lines A Day.
February 9, 2013 at 5:57 am
Exceptional Mel – thank you, I really loved it.
February 9, 2013 at 11:39 am
Thank you so, so much for your kind words.
February 21, 2013 at 12:27 pm
Besides being an incredible person, a wonderful mom, an astute businesswoman, a cherished friend and a phenomenal poet, our gal Melissa is now a !published! all-of-the-above, turning pain into beauty.
February 21, 2013 at 12:40 pm
Portia! You are much too kind. Thank you so very much, cherished friend.
February 21, 2013 at 1:10 pm
(-;
February 26, 2013 at 2:05 pm
Melissa, Im still here, I thought I had your email, but didnt-im not feeling well and having computer trouble. hang with me-i love your ideas and work. beebeesworld
February 26, 2013 at 2:16 pm
hey there, sweetheart – so good to hear from you. melissa@melissahassard.com —
know you have lots going on — stay in touch as you can.
much love,
m.