Navy

If euphemisms were true,

and you only passed on,

I feel it would be quite less apparent

that you’re gone.

For passing is peaceful,

and peace lives not in grief.

Except for when one can remember

that there’s love underneath.

Like old wallpaper, there but unseen, hiding under new paint

Still there, permanent and holding on if even only with an appearance faint.

Because of brushes dragging black ink across an already grey canvas,

it seems like the original wallpaper has suddenly vanished.

When loss paints love the darkest shade of blue,

loss left me navy and howling for you.

Lost in the ocean of what was and won’t be,

bobbing in the waves, desperate to breathe.

Water dark with a head barely above,

you were the first person who I ever loved.

Now I know nothing of a love not true,

and everything at all of a love left blue.

Blue like midnight and trenches deep,

at midnight I scream but I don’t let out a peep.

The white walls turn blue, covering the wallpaper,

I dream of another universe, another life where I could have saved you first.

First, before the dark blue covered the walls,

before the lines blurred between light and the darkness which befalls

On a stormy night like I’ve seen too many times before

only a small speck of light comes through the crack in the door.

The sky is gray like charcoal

and the trees sway in symphonies.

There’s a bittersweet song in these gray skies,

the dust rises into the breeze

Cloudy, hazy, with dirt specks stuck under eyelids,

a haziness so consuming, clear vision it forbids.

The clouds swallow up the sky, the moon fights to show its light,

I imagine you dancing in the stars when it falls dark at night.

Navy, like midnight when the sky goes to sleep

the moon and you, my audience, as I laugh and as I weep.

Peel the wallpaper back, there’s color in these stars,

like the pigment left over when cuts become scars.

Passing is peaceful,

and peace lives not in grief.

Except for when one can remember

that there’s love underneath.