Palette’s Disregard

I am somewhat afraid to write this poem

The thought of breathing in the vividness of solidifying the memory

Of a woman, of abandonment, of the that is all there will ever be

It is a rakish form of smeared oil paint love

First we met, your chest and neck were covered

Wrapped in mild winter’s armor, cosmetics nil

You and a paper tea cup, hair pinned up

Texted instruction-map from the rear of the establishment

To outside the doorway to meet me, sight

In my sky blue dove shirt diffusing bombs

Salutations and a line to tell me of your migraines

The medicated injections and hospital stays

Your body attended to other adult’s children in feaux-Louisiana snow

Now here with me eliciting reaction to your confessional vulnerability

At the impetus, sentences before sentences, as if a warning of repetitive false turns

In white precipitous carpet that falls like winter in spring so that nothing has much time to grow

The bastard chilling wince of the throng rattle vein grip upon a body

Of why one may wish, but not be able, the absolute in expectation of the go-on without me

Nature of the member of the party with the wounded knee, stuttering in-step

Apologizing preemptively for that which is reactionary

As if for me to turn my chin to see you hold the liquid vessel in your palms

And find you beautiful, plain, water-like, as you are, sequestered and yet naked

Setting terms, attempting to inform me why I will inevitably wish to desist 

As if effort, empathy, or endearment as a manifestation displaying strength were alien

To the mathematics of your ears, impossibilities in the infiniteness of what might be

Computing in my houses in the currency of how I paid for my voyage to arrive

Standing next to you in that line, humans breathing on the liquid ceiling of water and leaves

Testing when to touch lips with the state of matter presented evolving vapor and flavor

Tea and not alcohol, here and not there, and I think of potential triggers and comfort

And being of such and seeing you to feel safe, to know me better and divulge elements of personhood

Familial interactions and you speak of an aunt’s leukemia at nine survived to a life of disability

Dot, narcissistically denying label of grandmother to henpeck her daughter to serve her other daughter 

Caregiver, demands, parent’s divorced, two half-sisters

Father architecture school in Arizona after parents met at Butler University in Indianapolis

You followed him to be a Wildcat in art, taught at Clark and Chalmette

Confronted the administrative harangue of football coach solidarity grade-change orders

The skill-set focus of discipline minimizations fractal-like peppering a self-portrait

Of what it means to be a woman, an adult, in equal-footed membership with generations

Without birthed child or matrimonial ceremony in forbearer Baptist testimonies

To shrink you, to reduce the sauce by half and by half, concentrated artistic beauty

Maybe you see it, maybe you don’t, I have not looked upon you long enough to know,

But in the steam off the surface of the cup I could see your fortitude in your loveliness

A body tested to choose to create, to dissuade sublimation, to be solid in who you are

An artist in substance, molding a clay of flesh and spirit delinking from the raucous mobs

A hospital stay, a mother came, and an aunt died while your life-giver was attending to you

Migraine addled and the independent spark of a decade in New Orleans

As a woman has a right to choose and dots have to move or be repeated

From periods into ellipses truncating the repetitive platter of one’s life as a simulacrum

Of where one came from into what one will be and to live as you are painting

Is blasphemous to Dot and a one bedroom apartment and yoga, a dog, and the 264 color box of crayons

Smells glorious and the sound of paper-box cracking heavenly gates 

Disciplines of teacher does not so much talk, but shifts,

Tips a student in perception based on where the student is

The malleability of space, of what can be, independent postures

Of my own fears of avoiding narcissists and smelling the genuine in a first hug

In the lingering pheromone of you wanting to talk more, continue upon a table

I had a cranberry apple tea

The time in-between the distance-dancing, the deciphering non-responses

Texts and missed call notifications balancing with the policy of parents, nanny

To other’s offspring restricting correspondence yet in the window’s aperture

There is still the bewildering wisp of silence fluttering moth wings through the light

Shadows in the flaps, disclosures and netting, mosquito buzz saw camouflage

Decoding offers and circumstance, soccer games and Schrodinger’s feline

The speed of you, the slow reveal and what comfortable or safe or ready to speak

Appear like, knowing the trepidation of these ledge words, to offer as a man echo 

The statements of feeling overwhelmed and unable to talk, exhaustion

Me pondering what it is like to be in your body, the suggestion of a walk, a cup, a yoga mat

Cartographer’s sketching of a monkey’s café, balance and wellness

Veins derail the track sink the ache of your head into a knock-out shot

Empathy offered and I made this time to get to know you better

So this is what I wish, pearls of honesty suspended in this string of time between us

A well of sadness in being unable to do the things you want; to look ahead

And reminisce in the lost connections snipped in cannot go or do or be

The idea of your head in my lap, my hands to rub your skull,

I pictured you there, a would-have into a make-it-so sleep

Into the life spawning tiny nugget-shells of time we never foresee, but explore

Being present willing to be liquid, to shift in the availability for the form you are able to take

For this moment, the state of your body, able to drive again, calling me; I answer hopeful

Gathered supplies in the available time to cook dinner in the event you might have wanted

Someplace quiet to sequester, away from the brighter lights of a magazine into the colors of my home

My space, my frames and words, the aromas of my kitchen emulsifying herbs, oils, and plants

Seeds for you, here in the bottle of pinot noir you brought for me to open, us to share, imbibing

A moment on a sofa, fabric, arms, conversation meandering into a silence

And the sky fell a liquid ceiling all-at-once, the deluge insatiable

Of first kiss into hands gripping arms, mounding legs, neck firmly molded into palm

Bodies arousing flush from an orchestra of words into all this silence on fire

The inferno of passionate drive from first kiss into pouring into another human being novel

Allaying two years of my fears and the would-not go decisions and the abruptness

Felt like lightening permission to be, could feel of what you wanted, the tossing of fabric

The directions to a stairwell, the steadying tie of hand to locate bedroom passing art’s enamor

The tsunami of two condoms, four to six eruptions on each the come fast and hard on top

The arousal of peeling back layers of foam on the ocean, the heated caldera in the heights

Gripping arms, spreading vulva, penis, and arc of my hips as your favorite spot to sketch

Thighs to head massaging later, noticing you, being in the night, giving space

Head abuzz with the dimming down of old fears about sex and abandonment

In the morning you have to be to work and the arousal is flush, still in the bulging sensation

To ride awoken hard and still turned on, inside you again and this hesitancy to feel safe, this battle

Where I want to give in and not sure what is real, what is accessible, I leave it there, held 

Feeling the vibrations of your body these extreme polarities of pain and pleasure

From the prior afternoon syringe into this morning medication,

The clock ticking and I see you walk to your car

Wondering if I will ever see you again, knowing I shouldn’t imprint the past upon the present

Yet I am here past Christmas, another string of non-response texts scattered dare-be innocuous

Like rune translations predicting exactly that

The stumbling block of why

Hope shrinks back into the crevice of your self-doubt preservation or maybe uncouth decorum

To not dabble in how you might appear for sake of what you know you need

So it is, a placement of that long numb ache conversation

I have had before, but in the uniqueness of these throes

You have painted this picture in my poem

A taste I warned my palate not to savor for your palette’s disregard