Now how do you say it?

How do I say it?

I know every inch of the blue carpet now,

the green sofa that held my heart more than once,

the cracked violet wall paint that knows the secrets I save for lovers,

and those red leaves outside my window, who became my dearest confidantes,

that decorate their branches, my dance partners.

Home is the polychrome glance up I inhale-

in between the pages of pixelated gray-black text on white-ish screens

feeding words to blinking eyes

who pause and see turquoise on the windowsill -

and then remember to breathe . . .

This English language is an outsider to it all.

A voyeur vantage-angled label-maker

listing descriptions

Measuring everything

Even putting breath in a box

Boxing each color into a s q u

a r e

then saying those squares make a : w

? h

l e

e

How do I say it?

Making maps (out of letters or not) is what we do for each other.

We’re all cartographers

(and we should know that by now).

Even me, now, shaping something that’s not words

into these little gray-black letters

listless on a white-ish screen…

What do you see?

When I say “go” look up from the page and breathe in the first color that finds you...

Go

.

.

.

Now how do you say it?

Help me remember, forget-me-not,

can your peri wink illuminate some clues?

You remember, don’t you, sly little lilac

purpl exing with violets and lavender

While two lips wrap around sounds, red with effort trying to name you.

Yes, that garden’s got people guessing in gestures like flower petals.

Word weavers

s

p

g i

n n

n

i

a monochrome metronome

of gray-black letters on a white-ish screen

gasping for air,

trying to say it.