"Midnight Colors"

An ocean once blue and made of you

Now engulfs me in a sea of lurid green.

To view such sickly hues of pain and truth -

Forsooth to know such things unseen.

When the red of that life so softly lived, now dead,

Mixed with the pure-fallen snow of things left unsaid;

Now pink, I think, upon thy stead and

Confined to the blank white pages of your head.

Oh you, filled with every shade of sorrowed solitude

In things both thought and put to bed,

Like once, the little one with his little head.

You brood so much, yet only say enough
To show you feel it can’t be true.

A thousand twilit evenings spent between us three.

First bright and white, now dark and black and black and always black and binding.

The sun still sets shining with each new day finding

That half-remembered truth once more unveiled in the soot.

It sits amidst the dew so fresh and new

Upon a yellow rose’s ashen roots

Which grew and grew aside his tomb.

The days so filled and brimmed with colors

On swatches you chose for baby's blues.

Yet the day that came and faded to grey

Still sits like ebony storm clouds over your aching eyes at noon.

It hurts me too, you fool.

He never grew, outside your womb, except for those first three years,

Or was it two?

I hear you yell and scream your colorful curses to the midnight sky,

That he wasn't meant to die, and you wonder why the universe is so cruel.

But no answer came, just a little rain, and you look at me through the drops

And laugh that manic laugh that comes when you know not what else to do.

“He’s gone, John. And he took us, too.”