Blue Walls by Elizabeth Hitchcock

Monday-Friday

I’m the one with the purple pen, proofreading
judgements for seven judges,
the kind without robes.
Really, I’m in Wisconsin, Reno,
emerald cities, or on some rocks
that they called a beach.

Struck by unbidden loneliness,
I wait for you to come home
in the empty-making turquoise apartment
(walls covered with paintings
jellyfish, onion, lake).
I curl up, hungry
under your duvet, covered,
eating blueberries

Weekends

She is the one with the rolling pin,
we’re just here-sipping acrid coffee
my dad left in the craft.
Meandering along the riverbeds
of glacial silt, selecting stones
colored by washed up years, pick up the red stone
it’s a reflection of the aurora borealis,
I find you naked, covered
in fresh chilled mud.
Wrapped in night by the fire
with family- my parents collect lost children
they’re dazed and dizzy on the porch
underneath the antlers. I count the number of times
ghosts tread on the kindling

Mornings meet the mountains,
peaked in snow. It must be some kind of wonderful
waste waking up, trapped in sheets with you
and your bird tattoos


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