Borrowed Eyes

"I have lost everything," I tell you, 

"You have made me 

lose
everything"

With that it starts. 

Words slip off my tongue and I before I know it I’m jabbering and jabbering and the thoughts just keep coming and coming and I want to say things before you say them and I want you to just listen and not answer back and I want it to be easy for me to be right because damn it, I am right, and I want to prove that to me, then you, and I keep going and going and---

I’m talking in sign language.

You’re underwater and the tide is low so your world is far from mine again. I’m not making the slightest noise but it doesn’t matter because now, 

you can only hear codas*, anyway. 

This is what I don’t understand. Where are you when you leave my realm of understanding --you know, that silly little place where the sky is blue-- and how... how on earth do you get there?

Your existence has been part of mine for---far too many years and I guess somewhere between taking apart the world of concrete around us piece by piece with our bare hands and building it again from scratch with sarooj** and the smell of watercolor Magnolias, 

I have lost track of who you were and who I was before it was a we. 

Someone has turned off the lights now.

I can no longer see the things we built, I can no longer see your face, I have forgotten--

the sparkle in your eyes.

I know I’ve seen you at your best and I’ve seen you at your worst and that at some magical point in time, 

I have chosen 

both,

but at times like this I can’t remember why, how, how on earth.

And you know what the worst part is?

I am used to seeing the world in purple, now.

It has all been old polaroids and blackberry juice stains on white t-shirts for so long that when you take the blue away, 

even the red in the blood that gushes to my face with the anger from your words

feels odd and out of place.

I'm used to living in purple now...

goddammit.

* Pattern of click noises some species of whales use to communicate with each other.

** Construction material made of sand, clay, egg whites, lime, goat hair, and ash, used in certain parts of Iran.