Blanco
Cumulonimbus tidal waves
blanket the sky like an overcast of clean bed sheets
calming you into a dream.
It’s a lot like having your head in the clouds,
but you’re still grounded, rooted
like a white orchid - a delicate luxury.
And it’s an astonishing thing:
the feeling of snow on phantom limbs.
It makes you wonder if the Eskimos
had a word for the sensation
- somewhere in between shock
and silk, faux fur and ice.
It must feel nice - like fingering
pages of a notebook.
At times, it tastes like Marlboro lights
being smoked under moonlight
- the fumes dance in the wind
like feathers until they’re wisped
away into the atmosphere.
Far away from the words never said
on blank postcards never sent.
Those unexplored places live like skeletons,
groping onto hope.
Some people find life in surviving
blanched sand deserts
or skiing Mount Everest,
but you’ll notice
those of us who hide
and seek behind pearly teeth
and a counterfeit smile.
At our very best,
accepting death
can feel like telling time
with a broken wrist watch.
Will you use your seconds wisely?
We paint our lies white
as if the absence of truth
is the absence of color,
and we begin to forget that
honesty reads like love letters
on paper napkins and sounds like
Comptine D'un Autre Temps on the piano.
It tastes like a glass of water
in the summer and smells like
the soul of an old book.
It looks like a holy forest of
birch bark trees bathing
in ivory light.
And you are light,
like an egg shell
encasing a soulful ghost
that has built a bungalow
out of your bones.
Your hourglass
must be handled with care
because your light is
not an absence, it is
an affirmation –
even in blank space,
when there is seemingly nothing,
you are a reflection
of everything.