The blues all smush together into this hazy mist.

No distinction between land and sky.

Emerald water glistens into a soft marbled blue, giving way to swaths of cotton ball clouds.

The Korean family’s banter from camp still echoes within.

Forest lava, I still hear the little girl cry out to her childhood comrades.

But oh this blue.

Like a memory.

Whale skin glistening.

A Blue Jay’s feather flittering in the afternoon sun.

The soft, endless ocean in his eyes.

A deep sea galaxy, like the galvanized space in my heart

attempting to hold the soft warmth of trust and the dark anger of abandoment in such a small space.

But oh this blue…

*This poem is available in my book Soft With Me, printed and bound in Western North Carolina thanks to a grant from the N.C. Arts Council.