The Beauty 

in the Fading 

of a Bruise

“The colors! The colors! Stop the colors!”

                          ~Tippi Hedron in Marnie

In the mirror the clock

tells a different time.

We’re patients now.

All of us.

The world’s a hospital;

this is where we find ourselves.

Now every room’s a waiting room

waiting for our names to be called.

Someone looks up from a magazine

forgetting to disguise their distress.

I remind myself that despair in the morning

can lead to gratitude by end of day.

Between desperate measures and coping skills 

this may be all that’s holding us in place.

The scales have fallen from our eyes

and the colors close in.

Some colors conceal 

an Old Testament violence:

Teal sets it’s trap.

Blue, a camouflaged pit.

Yellow, a hangman’s knot.

Green, a meat gone bad.

Red, a trip wire on the stair.

Purple, a plunge into a morass.

The bottle of Rivaroxaban reads; “May cause bruising”.

From now on will every memory leave a mark?

The difference between a weapon and a tool

is how we use it on ourselves.

If its futile to resist, at least we can still persist.

Flailing only ends in being swallowed whole.

Best to spend each day overlooking what we can,

despite the violent colors pulling us towards themselves.

Why deny flowers a life in a vase?

When only something wild can save us now.

09/28/2021