Purple Shirt
Writing is not always writing. Sometimes it is
watching a purple shirt fold around slender arms
reaching to a double shot across a green book,
sparkling water to the brim. Suddenly I’ll feel
dehydrated, sipping coffee and wondering why
while the purple shirt slips away. Suddenly I’ll
long for a drink from billowing tubes of fabric,
almost denim and creased with age, purple like my
mother’s favorite color. Writing is not always
writing but sometimes it is getting all of this
nonsense down. Imagine now the empty glasses
and my page full of green lines like my favorite
color used to be. I’ll take a long drink from my
memory and stand up, satisfied with nothing
in particular but nevertheless buzzing.
Time elapses. Writing is not always writing
but sometimes it is feeling a heart under smooth
skin pulsing and perfect save one blemish, a scar
from a bike accident on your thirteenth birthday.
Imagine blue sky reflecting through the window,
sun too low to paint our naked bodies golden
and I’ll think I’m twice the age you were then, twenty
six on the twelfth this past Monday, too young for my
own purple shirt but old enough to buy my own
healthcare. Writing is not always writing. Sometimes
it is twenty six lines with twelve syllables each.
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