"Blue, Blue, Blue"
by Meghan Reyda-Molnar

it’s like when kids tell you to make them look like
spiderman, her face a canvas to paint on
a poem, she was in my lap
kind of asking for something I couldn’t deliver. or
maybe that was me.

anyway, it was supposed to be
the imitation of a hero
except shittier, because you can’t
blend words into skin with a sponge, you know.

the blue was the poem when it went “grief, grief, grief, grief”
and the red was the colour she saw in her
closed eyes in the sun.
the black was every vein of mine
touched and sullied like dye in water.
you see the problem?

she hummed thoughtfully while my hand moved
(maybe an affirmation that it was good, maybe just
an affirmation that she was there).

“grief grief grief
is love that’s rotting that’s
why it’s so hard to look at”
I wrote, or maybe she said,
or maybe somebody passing by
on the sidewalk outside
the open window did.

 

 

 

From The Malahat Review's spring issue #226