How many trips did we make back then
to the hardware store, as summer
leaned lazily into autumn; how many
holding their secret oceans of light
were mixed on our behalf, a seemingly
endless variety of color swatches
laid out like narrow, unframed windows,
opening onto a bright coastal morning
which no artist could ever have gotten right?
How elegant and whimsical their names,
dreamed up, I imagine, in some drab
and lifeless boardroom, and labeled here
in practiced script: English Chamomile,
Whispering Mist, Feathers of a Dove.
We read them aloud just to hear their music,
the unassuming romance they promised,
the time we longed for most of all.
How many thoughtless brushstrokes
covered the wall at the end of that narrow
hallway, as if the smallest of decisions
could make all the difference for us?
How many weeks before the baby arrived
to parents who could not agree
even on this, our days together already
beginning to flutter from our grasp, restless
and unfinished, all but flying away?
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