IF POPPIES WERE BLUE (A POEM)
If Poppies were blue
I might think of you.
The kid sits on the floor playing with distorted dystopian dinosaurs
They are crawling out of mud piles,
Fighting buck-toothed aliens with glowing limbs,
The neon in all the colors of the rainbow.
I push a sugar cube into an orange and suck on it,
childhood memories find their way to my conscious brain as I taste the sweet juice of the fruit.
Old days, gone days, dark days,
Better days,
Back then all Poppies were blue,
There were big-lipped, rainbow coloured unicorns dancing in the streets
David Bowie wasn’t dead,
and neither were ready Freddie, my dad or my grandmother.
I give the orange to the child,
She sucks on it with such delight
And talks to me about Peter Pan
"Why was he not a girl, mom?"
“Girls fly better than boys,”
“And they’re much better with pirates,
I’m sure the real Peter Pan was a girl.”
She stands up and wiggles around to the sound of music,
It’s harpsichord
Strange sounds make me feel lethargic,
I don’t feel like dancing with the kid,
But she drags me to my feet and we pretend to waltz for a while,
A rose in my mouth,
Yellow or white,
Not red,
Red roses are for lovebirds,
Never red.
If Poppies were blue,
I’d be thinking of you.
There is never enough time, people say,
But I have all the time in the world
Time has always been on my side
I’m the Godess of Time
I spread it around me like a baker spreads sprinkles
On a soft donut,
Or like a flower girl at a wedding,
I am the Godess of Time
I can give you all the time you need
If you just sit down and listen
Put away the tool in your hand
And listen to the sound of the rain outside.
If you do that for an hour every day
You will be able to join me
on the right side of time.
Life.
It's so very red.
If Poppies were blue, I’d be thinking of you,
But you left me and I’m still here,
Sitting in the same place,
Thinking different thoughts,
Fighting to keep my head above the water that you filled my life with,
I may be the Godess of Time,
But my heart is more breakable than I ever anticipated,
Redder too,
And now that it’s shattered
I will keep it with Cinderella’s glass shoe,
In a fairytale well,
Where the sun never shines
Where the fairy godmother can’t find it
Where the wolf cannot eat it raw.
It is raw.
If Poppies were blue, I’d be thinking of you.
The clouds are drifting away,
Soon the sun will shine,
It will bring brightness and the child will insist on ice-cream,
Yellow dresses
And happy jumps on the trampoline
with no socks.
If Poppies were blue, I'd think of you,
Thankfully they’re red,
And so fragile that even a single thought
Might make the petals float to the earth,
Leaving nothing but the green stalk,
And the tears
That insist on running down my cheek.
I am like those red Poppies,
Fragile
Ordinary
and probably red.
I don't like the color red.
If only Poppies were blue.
