iridia

in my city, the night
is so black, and
in my city
the sky is so white
that the shadows are identical everywhere—
and i am so sick of the same
two shades
in everyone and everything i see.

so i wait and wish and
pray for someone
to bring me what
i've been longing for—
buckets of color and bottles of paint to toss
and dash and hurl
across the empty canvas of my life.
(and i can't sleep that night, but)

he comes to me in the morning
when sunlight pours through my window
to make a puddle on the floor
and i think
that he is different—neither ebony nor
ivory took part in his creation, and so he
must be the rainbow
i've been waiting for.

fingertips dipped in paint, he teaches me
to color my world bright blues
and acid yellows,
paper whites
and iridescent greens,
every color before and after and in between
(even white deserves its place, he tells me, and brushes
a dirty streak of it across my face)

and as he splashes the canvas with his rainbows
i stare at his hands and wonder
how it can be that such beauty rests
within them and what
it would be like
to take his hands within mine
and hold them
until i know exactly what this is.

one last stroke; he is finished, and i see
that he has interwoven the black
with the white—
beauty is born of more than you imagine, he says,
make your mark.
but he has filled the air with
such light that i can hardly see
what is left to be done.

but i know that i want to fill his world
with what he brings to mine—
light and color and magic
to enchant me—
because he is so very beautiful
and because i have always
wished for such an artist
as this.

and i—i am not a lover of the sun; nor am i
a painter of horizons
and endless skies—i can only
ask you to color me
and my world.
but this i know—
i'm sick of only wishing and waiting and watching.
it's time to make things happen.

-

10.19.06.