please take that shard of porcelain that
this is my body, you see,
just a little piece of it —
can you put it your pocket and protect it?
oh, but it’s only for the night, i promise!
i fear i need to bare myself to the world so
it will be safer with you, i think.
it took me a while to figure out what kind
i had days where i felt phthalo or prussian
remember the most that i felt like i was
Duller. something had greyed me,
the ashes built from a fire
fingerprints on your whiskey glass
dust collecting on a box of cigarettes.
rather than dulling, i was aging;
right along with what lives around me.
even with grey they were always something like
something blue, at the base of it all,
and i am more of myself before anything.
i am not wholly blue, but i have life lived inside me, and
it made me a blue i had never considered before.
that is the blue of my porcelain.
i hope you love it like it was yours.