The blue veins of one woman’s body
branch through earthly things,
wire the soil, net butterflies, steady boughs
hung with nectarines, scent the skins of fruits
and the fingers of fruit thieves. Blue infuses all, extends
the crazing of the globe’s glaze. Even crow and raven
fool the sky, mirroring its gleam; they stitch into their breasts
with stolen thread from twilight’s crinoline.
Nothing here is absolutely ebony or shining white.
We have seen, you and I.
We go bluer:
pour Bluette into the washing machine, then
add it to ammonia in the jar, create crystals; skim fat
with spoons until the milk gets delicate with blue; bury
eggshells, make dirt less alkaline, so our pink hydrangeas
swell, dusk blue; swirl dish soap onto pie-stained plates, always
choose the tube of blue Colgate. Like sweet chorines
we tint the skin above our eyes with colors named
A Day at the Beach and Baby,
hinting with crushed pigments at this mystery
branching through, branching not as brightest light but
as a glow: opaline. Greedy, we grasp its residue,
and we go bluer
by the ocean, call it Mare, Mer, Mar, a body
wholly saline, entirely her tears. At dusk we split the curtains
in a rented Venice room, baptize ourselves Prettiest Grievous.
Night tides fluoresce with microscopic plants
who paint our footprints Biolume. At Coney Island you film my face
with such affection my undertones go Almost Indigo.
We binge, unzip the bag of cornflowers, gulp until the petals
clog our throats, and we’re taken by the undertow.
Parted. Ultramarine.
She’s violently romantic, wants what wants her,
wants it bluest.
Mornings, I wake up damp, cocooned: a caterpillar
turns to liquid before it emerges Mazarine.
I’m in her ventricle where Love holds me for hot
bluing, dyes me with molten salts, makes me more
Prussian, more Peacock.
And you, far off in her valve, become the winged Azure,
enhanced with lapis, with rare kingfisher tones.
We are two parts of one pulse. In time, we will
beat new wings toward an old remembered heat.
Precise as the preening of a pair of blue ground doves,
across the glittering distances, we will tint
each other's tongues.