Krisette Sia

Pink

Yesterday, I built houses out of dialects,
painted walls with adjectives,
made rugs of epistles.

Carnivals of hues turned iridescent by touch
gleamed against window panes
in compelling shapes of trinity,
blending what is primary
to disclose a vague spectrum of the world.

Ivory, mauve, lapis lazuli--
these are oracles of sound
echoing in a thumbprint
or tiny fragments of god on our skin.

Charcoal is the aftermath of bliss,
a certain grayness,
a feel of summer's scorched cheeks
tamed by wind.

Sapphire is the mouth of a cloud
before a storm;
a brief flicker of serenity--
the eye of a teardrop
as it hits a silent slope of jaw.

But what of ochre?
It is morning.
It is life.

Does reason have a color?
It is black, sleek,
rife in the belly of a whale;
but it is not infinite.

If I tilt my head
at just the right angle,
I would see the equation
where logic is relative to man's aptitude for it,
and that I exist simply because
I am aware of its absence.

Pink could be an accident.

 

June

JUNE--we watched flames freeze on a firefly's wing
until dawn broke the day into embers.

You held a second with a trembling fist,
juiced time of its essence, and raised a brow
in amusement as it pruned on your palm.

You were Celeste and I was Monica,
that night, when the stars were all hung and heavy
from drinking too much wine,
and we struggled to keep our heads afloat.

We categorized men based on the politics of salt
on our faces. It varied with the amount of tequila shots
our limp bodies could endure.

I wondered: does it hurt to be you? Light
crescendoed a vernal flush on your cheeks
till it was felt from behind lids--crisp, wild
and bellicose. I remember Tuesday
nights and cheap champagne. You said: "We all fall
short of perfect. When drunk, we are divine."

But you died with the season.
You come to me sometimes, in the wake of
halcyon late afternoons like gunshot
peeling through a lick of sky.
And I wonder: did it hurt to be you?

 

And I Look to the East

This is a day of grief, when evergreens fall off
fancy printed columns like dead pigeons
and people look to the east to confirm the mark
where you once were,
punching keys with your back hunched like a claw
while you daydreamed about lazyboys and dripping hours
till you've realized you've wasted your life.

They called you Judas, a sell-out,
a heathen who turned his palette in for a suit.
I called you the Morning Star.
And you were, for many reasons.
Where was your god when you decided
it was time to meet her?

I fold an entire ocean in my backpocket
to drown notes, receipts, paperclips,
glassy-eyed photographs that are creased
and bleeding into saltwater to discolor my initials.
People quote passages from Hallmark
but all I can think of is Kafka.
Anger is a dung beetle,
and I have all but squished it.

The fierce shape of a dragon kite pierces the sky
and sun comes pouring forth.
I regard it with disdain,
imagine nailmarks beneath the grass,
the piercing cry of the earth below.

Pain is a commodity we share.
It is a tragedy that I have stumbled upon--
that I must keep on breathing smog-tainted air,
cut my skin with mundane riddles nobody can answer,
grit my teeth and move on.

 

Brother

I, the set jaw of a monkey wrench,
white-knuckled agoraphobia of untested earth,
Prozac-happy, abrupt dent in time,
sleek-boned oracle basking
in the oily rays of sun.

You, the soft nerve of the moon,
a wormwood-scented infestation of sorts;
your cold tendrils clung to orbits
till you were high in your desolation.

We never did see eye to eye.

Bound by a shock of blood,
and a shared indifference;
a reluctance that, if we were to shrug it off,
click our slippers and start over, would bleed
into more subtle things:
     the Sunday paper,
     spit in my eye,
     your father and mine,
     cold toast and comfortable silences.

 

Innocence

There are moments when time crumbles into
coarse grains of sand. It slips
through our fingers,
like a rich, loose braid,
with the same cunning
of what forever must take.

Life becomes a river, moving
with impenetrable calm. We witness
all feeling separate
from the senses
then fall into order;
my whole life through a microfilm,
in a furious moment of clarity,
with the same embarrassment I felt then,
eating crayons, wearing striped knee-high socks.
It resurrects
as a lump in my throat.

I find myself back in that same room
where I stuck gum, drew
crippled spheres and x's while learning my
ones from threes; the scent of kiddie colognes
and half-eaten erasers, strawberry
kisses in pencil cases. My childish
doodles that parted one page from the next
would hold me there with such fondness.

Back in the day, a wise man used to say:
"It's a fact that
you can only loose your innocence once."
But I wonder
if we've ever been innocent at all.

 

Querida

        Here lie the embers
of a wonderful ache