mistake

by


"If there's one thing you need to learn," you told me, your voice as firm as 
a child's grip around his mother's waist on the first day of school, "It's that 
you should never mistake sunsets for love." There are some things that are 
beautiful only to me: rain, for instance, and the very last book on the bottom 
of the shelf, and blank pages and broken hearts, which can sometimes mean 
pretty much the same thing. There are some things I am only getting to know 
but you have already turned your back on: flying a kite, writing thank-you 
notes in thick brown ink, eating a proper breakfast, the idea of pets, poetry 
that is meant to make young girls clutch their skinny chests which have yet to 
understand what it feels like to ache with regret. There are some things only 
the sky knows tonight: that purple means all the bruises I try to cover up with 
sleeves and smiles; that red is for the strawberries we eat standing over our
kitchen sink, staining our lips and hands with something that looks a lot like 
all the fights we never finished, all the friends who keep telling us to leave, 
or sleep, whichever comes first; that pink is for our palms and the parts of 
ourselves we scrub clean and raw; that orange is for the waiting and that there 
is no silver, not tonight. That I see you in every color. When darkness comes I 
will try to find a place to rest my head still reeling with all the purples and 
reds and pinks and oranges, and you will look out into the blackest black, your
face a flickering candle flame, and try to make out something, anything beautiful.