Pink Sky

maybe that’s what childhood was,
a mellowed euphemism
for barely remembered years,
the silent struggle,
to escape from her tiny body,
to reach somewhere beyond
the rarefied air at her fingertips,
grab the wheel
and change direction;

all those words and people and events
propelling her,
no, pushing her unstable feet,
down a road she couldn’t see,
even climbing on the big, broken pot
peering over the green stone wall,
but something inside
that spoke in soft vowels and rhyme,
had a pink sky and purple stars,
something inside
told her it was a path,
that wasn’t meant to be;

…

the vodka martini sat untouched
while she untangled the threads,
a turgid sky roiled over the heaving earth,
her metaphors were raw and bent,
and the stars
the stars had stopped twinkling
their coded villanelles
a long time ago;

she climbed on the roof
and stood on her toes,
terracotta tiles damp from the early dew,
hands gathering the sky,
there, in that dark hollow of the moon
was the map,
the one with the other road marked,
the one not punctuated
by yellow pools of lifeless light;

the road that was meant to be,
the road she could not see,
where the wheel might have turned,
where the roses bloomed as pink as the sky;
and still all those words and people and events
propelling her,
no, pushing her unstable feet.