“Emerald with Gold Flakes”

“I would kill for those lashes”, she whispered
As locks fell, the whisper itching as much
My eyes never saw themselves until later,
Emerald with gold flakes, I typed, in the blue light
For a time they were, until other shapes began to form
My hair shooting to the sky, the drip-drip-drip of my nose
The cavern of my soul contained a heart too small for my dreams, always thumping
The echo now much tighter, but never a threat
Sounds bouncing from tunnels, the gurgling of a stream whose faucet has been shut off
Like children playing keep-away in the damp blue grass
A cave of lightness and sadness, of bouncing laughter,
Without a penned story on any wall,
“So they can’t identify your body”, he intoned
None that wasn’t carved by the
Dragons
Of scalding water, concrete, or steel
Unmarked by piercing but permanently etched by the redness of a slap
“They change”, she said, “Now they’re sky blue”
Like my father’s