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