Quick Blue
Suzanne Scarfone

Part I

This morning
when I find out
you are
suffering
birds quiet
in colorless trees
and wild violets
around the front walk
lose their way
my womb gasps
and wilts as I look up
to the clear sky
for some kind of redemption
but it is busy

my words offer
you no solace
and seem like
cold marbles
coming from the place
in me that bore you
my daughter
I think about your sweet
skin your pale candied
flesh and want to nuzzle
you cover you with fragrant
parts of me
but instead I vanish

Part II

This afternoon
I doze on a worn flowered
couch and dream
no one sees I’m dead
and they sweep up my bones
and wrap them in pink tissue
paper and keep talking
overhead Van Gogh’s pink
ear drifts
from somewhere near
my son urgently whispers
my name
I struggle to reappear
breathe in
breathe out
breathe in
breathe out
he’s finally figured
out where heaven is
a question he’s been
pondering for years
I found out heaven exists at the
moment you die and realize
you’ve done good things
it only lasts a second
but it’s worth it

so now he knows he is
his own god
he is his body
and in this oneness
is his divinity
he runs
he skates
he trips
he paces in circles
round and round
and thinks in
movements
he swings a bat
and hums a lot
for heaven will be just
one moment
of stasis
how will his body
change now that
he knows this
secret
will his mind stop
his movement
or will he rush
more joyously
to feel himself
in space

Part III

Our house tonight
is full of bleeding
and sweating
of girls and boys
of heaven and dust
and fear
it’s as though we are
roaming through a scrambled bible
reenacting the stories
in no particular
order
and this house squealing
with madness and
song
in one room someone dreams
and is god
in another someone paints
and is sight
and by the window
I stare at the moon
and breathe
knowing
I’ll soon move from this
sealike enchantment
to the struggle upstairs
to hearts and bones
and the quick blue
feeling
that never stops