WRITE UNDER THE MOON

You Wore a Blue Silk Shirt

A poem

February 25th we climbed Spencer’s Butte it was your birthday. You wore a blue silk shirt in the cold air of the clear bright summit

Your eyes so blue, the shirt my gift, your eyes sapphires and your mouth red and we were there, that time, that place 1992.

I loved you, and it was February 25th — we went for Indian food later, I wore a gold ring with a tiny diamond and a red stone, a ruby.

At night, we wrap ourselves like anemone drowning in love, no need for air or time, that moment that kiss, your soft hair on my face, you above me.

Our happiness so profound — and would we have a baby, would we live in Oregon, would we live in Ohio, near your parents or mine?

How would we make our way, would you be a professor, and me a teacher? would we make black tea with sugar, eat buttered toast and go to work, and come home and kiss good nights?

No.

Hope died fast, burning down.

In time I am the cold one the one who doesn’t stir the fire because she sits and stares at the gray ashes, the leftovers of things cold and sad and dead.

The one wrapped in an old blanket that was my mother’s, or someone’s I loved, I don’t remember when sorrow said no, there would be no baby, there would be no New Year’s kiss at midnight.

When you died in December I flew you home in cold porcelain, buckled into the seat of the plane and let the cabin crew think you were my husband, but how could you be if you were in an urn, like a genie in a bottle and no wishes were coming true.

How the body remembers. February was your birth month. Lately I think of you, in a blue silk shirt with those eyes and our hopes stretched on the horizon as far as we could see, all the way to the waves of the Pacific Ocean.

For Ken, 25 February 1957 to 7 December 2016