Writer's Corner

She Comes in Colors

by Kyle Hemmings

Dipped in pink flesh, white chemise,
rose lipstick, argent fingernails,
the way her bare feet kiss the floor,
the patter of rain over hard roofs,
my tapering thoughts in a light downpour,
“Would you like some tea?” she says,
the drift of her honey voice from the kitchen
and in her rainbow bed I’m as dizzy
as a boy juggling lemons for hours.
Can’t keep track of my thoughts,
their complimentary colors swirling.
Then, later, the vestige of her disappearance:
a sigh, (transparent), the spank of the door,
the sliver of blackness glutting the room,
on this block--the foreclosure of empty slate houses.

Years later, I’m a slave to unanswered junk
mails and anonymous phone calls,
I can’t recall who I once was in Michigan or Vermont.
I watch the fading of houses and trees
Into the shadows that bore their substance,
Then slowly, a woman turning, saying my name
with the delicacy of rubbing excess ink off a brush,
then she fades into dark background colors,
the washed sepia of my past peeling back to now,
the greying of obsolete canvas longing.

© - 2007 Hemmings