Green Light
On Christmas, no one can really go home.
Home is a place that exists in the past.
Do you remember yourself at your happiest?
Some of the best memories smell like winter-whipped
pine. Some others smell like summer-drunk grass.
If you bundle up a room full of presents,
you’ll still crave the edgy emptiness of your last fast.
Holidays are hooks of grieving green and greed
and yet nativities naively narrate each new year
as somehow different from the last.
Blue Light
In Québec, I got lost on the blue line.
I spoke French, but couldn’t understand what
they said. When the train moved faster, I
balled small as a bullet. When it stopped,
it was as if I were dead. I carried my ghost
groceries through the blizzard, without my
mittens or my hat. I spent the next two days
defrosting my pear-shaped plum-bruised hands.
There is no light when the blue leaves
your body. Everything turns a swollen blue-red.
Indigo Light
Look at the rain through the castle.
Nothing is stranger than air. Here we go again
drinking rose water. I shut the door,
but the light filters there. The light on the wheel
is a centipede. The spokes are the strands of its
hair. The lake holds the secrets of summer.
Two girls named Indigo once drowned on a dare.
Their dull skulls scrape my tongue
like rock candy. I taste their names
like blue violets on air.
