I never thought I’d be the silly writer
Who would dare to utter the cliche
‘Your lips were the color of sky’.
But here I am,
And to say otherwise would be a lie.
The sky tonight for perhaps a minute and a half
Was the same color as the gunmetal chill
Of your lips
In the cold water between two mountains
We’d been promised.
‘Your lips were the color of sky.’
It’s a strange thing to say, because
We tend to think of lips as red
Or pink or, on rare occasion, lilac.
But blue is death’s hue
Frozen solid, inimitable.
The swath that carved itself into the cheeks of the wind
That bit the moon’s lip
As she played a tremulous song
Jazz, perhaps–
In the cold water between two mountains
We’d been promised.
Black and white the keys
The chords that rippled across the lake
The music I heard so very few hours ago
In the cold water between two mountains
We’d been promised.
The Z-Axis 