Of Blue

“Of Blue”

When asked of the color blue,
a little girl might say:
the sky when there’s a lack of rain,
or maybe fish-scales,
water, eyes, or blueberries, sweet, sugary,
pucker-your-lips blueberries when they’re not quite ripe.
But baby doesn’t know,
blue is a whole Universe.
I wasn't always blue.
But you kissed me when I was ivory white,
when blue shows up in fingerprints,
and you said shh when I was chocolate brown
because brown doesn't show blue.
Brown has never shown blue,
like sixteen doesn't show blue,
and poor doesn't show blue,
and daughter doesn't show blue,
and quiet-under-the-blankets doesn't show blue.
The past has shown that woman shows no blue,
woman feels no blue,
woman has no words to say about her blue thoughts.
I could say new words about blue,
write a poem about sky and sea and the color of thoughts in the morning
and berries and eyes and when you hurt ¬¬me hard and my skin turned blue.
Blue has become a woman’s word,
and I want to own it now like women’s words before:
Magdalene, Jezebel, temptress, goddess, mother, Earth;
words that have become legends that have in time become warnings.
But you stole my words, my darling.
You took words like maim, kill, pain, power, God
and I was left alone with only pronouns,
pronouns that let you play target practice with my womanhood,
hitting the essentialist bull’s-eye of my “center,”
of my “self,”
of my warm, wet identity as She.
Words reduce me to nothing but She:
She with the bruises,
She with the dead eyes.
“She” means nothing to me.
I am a woman, but woman is a word that I would take from you,
That I would own and define.
I am more than arms and legs,
black or white or rich or poor or
alley baby dying in a hospital,
blue lips to kiss,
purple skin warm to the touch.
I am more than letters strung together,
I am more than a political agenda,
and I am more than Blue.
I am more than bruises, more than fish,
more than bittersweet berries with fresh juice.
I'm a minefield, baby,
a minefield littered with colors and words of the past.
I would own woman, the word,
and make her not blue,
but transcendent.

History of Skin

"History of Skin"

In the morning, when the sun is new
and waking up with her,
she likes to pretend his naked skin is a world,
lying prone against her,
hand absentmindedly sliding down smooth curves.
She populates the land with secret histories,
secret people she whispers to the dark
when he comes home and the food is hot
but her heart is lukewarm.
Plunging her hands into the sink,
she pictures the sea and herself a God,
impersonal Athena of dishwater
washing away with soap the secret
histories of cutlery,
the mouths and lips and tongues
that live in their pasts.
She imagines herself a dish
in the warm water of a bathtub,
uses a loofah to wash sins
and men from her skin,
hoping against hope that it can be hers again.
She remembers a time long past
when she made futures with her lips,
not people with her hips
and his skin.
She doesn’t tell those stories anymore.
She picks up his plate
and hers,
both dirty now.
She makes love to the chore,
does the dishes with warmer water
to feel her hands pink,
and she wakes up
touching herself.