Mom doesn’t like poetry since it’s not clear like how things should be. Until you write her one, and beaming she’ll put it on the fridge with a magnet. Mom likes things sorted and clean, papers off the table or in the bin, dishes in the sink or the cupboard. What is this? Why is this here? If it’s clutter, it’s just stuff. Don’t save it. In her room she has 37 years of photos and sometimes tears up when she thinks of her parents but she would never admit it. So, she laughs and means it when her grandchildren dump the box of toys across the living room and the dogs slide down the hall past the family photos and bang open doors after a bouncing ball. Most of the lines on her face come from laughing, crows’ feet dotting her crinkling eyes. Her birdcall laugh hangs high above any room like a day-warbler or a hooting night-owl over the treetops. So much of her is rocks and earth and order, but every bit of her speaks of beating wings and blue skies. Mom’s favorite color is blue, deep like the ocean, bright like the sky. Don’t tell her blue’s a sad color; she dressed her baby boy in the ocean and then his sister when she could fit his hand-me-downs, and then laughed when the disapproving daycare lady sent her daughter home in pink. She lives with her husband of 36 years in a light blue house and relished painting skies on her kitchen and living room walls after 10 years of white and little time and laughed again when her children protested at the blue walls, rugs, and curtains. Time may pass, and the blue curtains, rugs, and walls may have disappeared and her children may have had children, but blue is still her favorite color and her children are still her children, and she still doesn’t like poetry.