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.