April 1: Moonstone

All day today
I have been blinking back tears.
Finally I stitched them all together
and hid them in the back of my throat.
I'd like to think of it as a precious gem
tucked away in this hollow - a moonstone
that burns when I swallow. A clouded,
burnished thing that glints blue in the light
of my voice. Something that could shatter:

into a rainfall of glass shards, a cloudburst of tears.
Something that could cut right through flesh and fear.

I'd like to think that the world is edged all in gold and gleaming gemstone
if only one looks in the right light/ I'd like to think of my insistent sorrow
as beautiful, something shining a hundred shades of blue under white light.

Cobalt:
the colour of the sky when I can't bear to be alive.
The simple absurdity of sorrow. How feeling
crashes through structures of language
and reason like a wild animal
through forest and field.

Teal:
the feeling of helplessness, and how it drips
down your spine and through your skin
like something dangerous.

Sapphire:
the sound of my grandmother's voice cracking.
The secrets she never unravelled. The way our house
still smells of grief. Her blooming pride, her easy
gratitude. Her toenails painted
like gemstones.

Indigo:
the deep purples of everything I have ever lost.
The weight of a long and happy life on my mind.
To have to tell my parents
I failed at joy.

Ultramarine:
how the ocean asks for more than its fair share
of light. Like me. How it glimmers unabashedly.
How it refuses to settle for anything less than a
miracle. How it loves the shore
in fragments; tides and waves.

Turquoise:
the stains of darkness
I never admitted I owned.



All this, and
Azure:
the insistence that life goes on, no matter what.
The hope that clings to my skirts and dusts my feet gold.
Azure: too many colours and conversations to condense.
The taste of blooming heartache that always becomes a shade
of sky. The memory of a blossoming in my grandmother's throat
that eventually turned solid and crystal, a moonstone
that she could never swallow. A tumour, insistent, and
a story that could only end one way. Like all of them.
Azure: the raw reality of death. How it means
everything; and nothing at all. How life is
the hardest thing in the world; and also
the easiest.