Red,
Gone is the season when a song of you might bloom on back to black and blue me.
Me—that’s right, Red, Me—for gone too is the grace we shared as part of that familial We.
That lovely We we loved has broken, Red, as useless as limbs of a lightning tree, these ceramic selves sort of sharpening themselves from all that was singular once, then split.
Now it’s broken we’s making you’s and me’s, our edges cut from one ceramic grace, making grief of what could have, might still, or all that would might still should be.
And me? Well I’ve inhaled America via highway again, nightmares seen stop by stop for gasoline, and I write to you from here now, Red, from right back home—I write to you from The Blue Room.
Remember the trees we felled to bridge your father’s mind to mine? Well I followed those old mountain streams steaming toward Montana springs, walked the waters of that life’s long-forgotten dream, and stone by stone, through the mountain green, I’ve studied the rot of those stumps.
The flowers you weaved are tattooed to me. Each blooming edge a fledgling line.
But no vision is complete without you, Red. Still. Even after all that flowered from this heart break in time.
I’d fell forests to know what you remember.
Dyl