"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 see the otherwise-unseen.

The red blood of a life so softly lived — now dead —

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

Now pink, I think, as soon it bled while

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.

Now instead you brood in colors muted,

Saying only enough to show

You can’t accept the horrid truth.

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, stops shining,

With each new day finding

That half-remembered doom 

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 took away

The light and filled our lives with grey

Still sits like ebony storm clouds

Over your aching eyes at noon.

I see only shadows now,

Dimly lit behind the shroud; 

There’s naught but darkness 

When now I look at you. 

But it hurts me too, you fool.

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

Or was it two?

One night, I heard you yell and scream

Your colorful curses to the midnight sky,

That he wasn't meant to die, 

And you wondered why the universe is so cruel.

But no answer came, just a little rain,

And you looked at me through the drops,

As you laughed that manic laugh that came 

When you knew not what else to do:

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