Indigo had paper lungs and she never cried.
She loved orange peels and silk ribbons and blue ink on fingertips.
I sometimes blew air through her ribs to see them rise and fall,
but my words always echoed back to things I never meant to say.
Indigo was my radio ghost and I swore I saw her even after she left.
She was the green light and the sleepless tide, the cathedral, the nuns,
the air molecules, the fevered dreams, the meaning behind them.
She left a vase of marigolds and I watched them wilt.
I know that was emblematic of something but I’m not a detective and she’s never been a suspect.
I paint her as the victim but she draws herself like a witness.
I sketch her outline on cracked windows in white chalk that covers women-like shadows.
Indigo was distant thunder but I never saw lightning.
She was a silver locket lacking a photograph and I was a man finding a purpose.
We are fonts of the same people who can’t understand the other but the writing is the same.
I read it late at night and let it consume me.
It’s her voice on the edge of my bed, lemony and muffled, and she’s saying something I’ll never
know.
I am broken glass and Indigo is stitched palms,
I am uniform and Indigo is the equilibrium.
I’d ask her yes or no questions and the answer would always surprise me
She is unchanged and I am a man who hates solving things not full of clues.
I bought a ring but never learned the size of her finger
and that’s emblematic of something too but it’s never what you think with her.
She’s a lozenge and your throat is burning.
She’s the cherry kind and she’s sweet and candy, useless.
She drops my ring in the sapphire fog and I don’t bother to pick it up.
I met Indigo in a violet thunderstorm and
flickering motel lights made her blue hair seem green.
Indigo was a locked drawer
and I am blueprints for nothing.
We are mismatched teacups, and hollow laughter, and sleeping streetlights.
She sometimes sends me sepia-toned postcards
and never signs them.
She is a woman invariable and I am a mathematician.
I hear her voice in deserted museums and fossilized laughter.
I am a man forever changing and she is my Indigo Static.