I Want to Tell You How
I want to tell you how
I want to tell you how
orange emerged from grey-blue clouds and how
the darkened ridge became your cheek at night
and the glow, the unspoken safeness of your skin
I want to tell you how
this orange span of light is the sadness of distance, is
absence stretched across the sky, lined reminder of
looking up and looking out without each other
I want to tell you how
this orange is my thankfulness for you, your presence
for memory offering the past in this present
to walk through my days with only these distilled fragments
I want to tell you how
this orange is seeing summer in your blue eyes
mercurial sky, and I, held there in iris, in water
where I never knew I could feel such solidity in love
I want to tell you how
this orange holds a depth of connectedness
one that was, no longer is, absent under the grey of our winter
and so now I see you on the surface of every flower
I want to tell you how
this orange is my love for you, this love is as color
constant pulse of absorption, a phenomenal reflection
a gift so overwhelming, so encompassing, so drawing
It was a dusk of enrapturing light and wind. I was held by grey-blue clouds to the west, by burning orange to the north, by a sherbet streaked sky to the east, and by a rising moon slightly south. The orange in particular compelled me to think about the first nasturtium I saw this summer. When I saw it, he was out to sea, and we hadn't yet had the chance to behold a flower dabbled space together. And so though I felt love for him, I did not see him within this, and so my mind traveled elsewhere and to a familiar line about a circular orange flower. But now, having spent these warm months together, having cut flowers for the dinner table, having made crowns and worn them in our hair, having them as a backdrop to home, I see him in every nasturtium, in every flower. This proximity in absence allowed by seeing someone in all things seems like quite a gift, a painfully beautiful gift, one we can choose to keep unraveling and unraveling as deeply as we dare to know.