Skyes, Blu

April 14, 2010

Skyes, Blu

Blu Skyes never cared to be known. 

My name should be Icarus, she said, tripping her pen onto the sidewalk below.  She leapt down from the tree at a height that would have made most people’s bones rattle in their skin. 

I stepped lightly to the ground from the bottommost branch.  “What do you mean?” 

He was such a failure, she replied. 

I wanted to tell her, “You’re no failure,” but all I said was, “I have to go.” 

Blu would have drowned the kittens of the Cheshire cat not because they would’ve died anyway, but because she would have been jealous. 

She and I were in some garden when she said, Reach me a rose, will you?  Their stems remind me of love and The Great Gatsby. 

“We all live in somebody’s future, Blu,” I told her. 

But I worry about the ones whose pasts we have already abused.   

If you were glass or if you were stone, Blu would rub you smooth, and you would shine.  Me, she never touched. 

The train lumbered along like some subterranean beast as we waited to cross the tracks. 

False face must hide what the false heart doth know, she quoted.  That’s Shakespeare.

I wanted to ask, “What have you done that you need to hide?” but I could only nod and add, “Macbeth.” 

What happened to those blueberry eyes, Blu Skyes?  That raspberry smile?  Did your faith take them with her when she left?  Or was it just a matter of time?

She skipped stones in the brook as I sat and watched.  Far too similar are kites and cranes.  Far too different are birds and planes. 

If I had had the courage, I would have demanded, “Tell me what you mean!  I may not understand, but at least I can try.”  Instead, “Who came up with that one?”

For once, her eyes were not wasps, but water. Her voice was not ruthless, but soft, soft, soft. I did.  

It was a sea that threatened her.  I had always stood with her, always ankle deep, but always behind her, and she would never know. 

I pictured us tightrope-walking along the thin line of our hopes in the dying sunlight.  If I ever glanced down, Blu would whisper, Don’t look at it too long, or you’ll realize it doesn’t exist.

If I were brave, I would have dared those spider-web dreams to disappear.  If I were brave, I would have pieced us back together if we fell.  If I were brave, I would have spoken up whenever I had had something to say.  If I were brave, I would have done what Daedalus never could.

I would have saved us both.