the mid-day sky paints the undersides
of my closed eyelids blue as I try furiously
to wet my chapped lips and peel away that dead skin
to forget the memory of yours, so dry on my index finger
by the time 3 a.m. rolled around
and I finally got to the sink in my bathroom.
both the soap foaming on my fingers
and my clean-faced reflection in the mirror
were like I was, sunbathing
under clouds, but then

a year went by and carried us full circle.
the wind of that hurricane still rustling our still-
growing hair, I came to wonder whether that long journey
back to the white-washed night-time kitchen in my mom’s
otherwise empty house
was worth it—all the hesitancy and then
all the alarming and ultimate lack thereof. If only because of
those lanterns we sent
up into the atmosphere and
across the already countless pages of the journal you made for me,
I’m inclined to say (hesitantly, it seems, but
ultimately not so hesitantly at all) that
yes, it was.
all of it was worth it.
so now I’m left

with that blue,
that starling, stunning, shocking,
vivid blue, so deep
that even when I close my eyes and try
to blind myself from it, it sits there anyway
on the undersides of my closed eyelids
like a dream or a drugged vision, but more profound
because I know
that when I go to bed tonight, it won’t have faded in
some form of perturbed sobriety. it will still be there,
just as startling, real, and vivid
slinking surreptitiously through every moment then
on.