Some Pink in Your Color

Did you know I’m in this hospital bed?
I’m not. I’m in the same light you stand in,
much the same way I’m in the waist of your Carolina
watching from the screen across the bed
whose pulse is worn down with an IV to the head.
 
We are all snow birds atop
the cherry blossoms of August.
Springtime in Washington D.C.
passed too fast, nearly in the flash of Rose
brushing her teeth over the bedpan.
 
No adrenal gland has known such cortisol,
such heartbreaking I love you O my God,
so many soldiers on the brink of their lives returning!
Are we still talking to the same god?
 
I can’t imagine the heart anymore
now that it presses my ribs apart,
a balloon of such gravity I ache for stars in a jar,
wasps whose love reminds me of fireflies tonight.

Copyright Credit: Amy King, “Some Pink in Your Color” from I Want to Make You Safe. Copyright © 2011 by Amy King. Reprinted by permission of Litmus Press.
Source: I Want to Make You Safe (Litmus Press, 2011)