Helms, 1999, Phoenix, 2000

Baby Blue does no justice to the Indigo that seeps into the arteries

Of my neck, frost bite burning and burning into my lungs until

It folds me over in my sheets, knuckles white in a grasp that

Longs for a past

Intangible.

Heaving heavy to purge it out,

Capillaries drown where they long for

Bare chests in 2008 slip and slide heat,

And monster truck shows,

And cornflower

Nurseries.

Pastel Pink hides it’s venom under a sleeping bag,

Pulling me by my back length hair dipped with orange

Into the scratchy depths that smell of cheap cotton candy

And baby powder.

It waits in brown bags in your fifth grade classroom and

Black glitter boxes in the drug store,

Writing your fate in blood when you

Pull your bathing suit on at twelve

And you beg to pull your skin off at fifteen

And all for its presence

Alone.

White exists to suggest a future,

Washing hair removal cream down a drain who’s forgotten you,

Allowing ignorance towards the holes

Plastered through the lobes of your ears.

It’s blank and freeing,

Not without voice

That flees to remind you

How you began

At all:

With Pink on the bra you’ve swapped for skin,

Just a suit with scars in the corners of your belly,

Under your chest,

For you to admire

And for others to question in silence.

You don’t feel that pain anymore,

And cramp reliever isn’t required to

Soothe a hurt

That a Hospital room numbed,

Sleeping on a co-ed floor.

With Blue a color unneeded

To guarantee myself.

Never needing such a Blue to call my mom,

To sign that paper,

For Vinn to find his home in me;

He sleeps without sunny boy’s memories,

With Pink his favorite color,

Waking to make up

For what’s been taken

And that which is now

To be created.