A PERFECT, PALE BLUE
My mother once told me that hearts only open when broken,
And that the truest courage is born from a coward's battle cry.
I did not recognise blood when my father's lips ran like war, all
Because my mother spoke in stuttering pinks and lullaby blues.
Now these walls pray every night with their palms bent skywards,
In hopes that the empty sky does not forgive as easily as us.
He believed that difficult times birth heroes but tragedy lives in all of us.
Much like this city of dust, the sun hides everything that is broken
Until the wolves grow quiet and search for our moon, looking skywards
Like skyscrapers scraping the floor of every cloud. In silence, we'll cry.
In wonder, she'll die with dirt in her teeth, and I'll think of her river-red blues
And the shadowed hues that bent light to shine a different holiness upon us all.
But when his fist left craters in our sky, stars became blind and we died for all
The heroes who did not worship the same gods, eyes shut to prayer. To us
It was a different kind of worship—one that burned above in sunset blues.
Though we still saw the same sky, it was a different truth, bent to look broken.
This loss did not belong to us, but we grieved as though it was. We had to cry
Because it was easier to let the rain fall than to ask our tears to climb skywards.
And when the river floods his banks, we'll bend our crooked palms skywards,
Begging for forgiveness though we have not sinned. Clouds hover over all
Who dare to walk this cemetery, but books have been burned to make heroes cry
To empty skies. We will not stop the rain. Black roses will bloom between us
Like funeral goers and our echoes will refract a dawn that has been split and broken.
But her oceans cannot reflect the blood in our eyes. Only his perfect, pale blue.
This pain is not worn by him. But it is felt by us. His sky is still a perfect, pale blue
And when the sun dips, blood will fall like stars. "Tilt your clasped palms skywards."
We did not ask for more sunlight, just a little less darkness for she did not come broken.
A new moon will arc overhead and wolves will teach the hero that endurance is all
She'll ever need to survive the night. A broken ribcage does not always lead us
To a broken heart. We may fall like the mighty but this is not the same. I still cry
For a better morning but she has no stomach to swallow his sky so let her cry
For the other mothers who did not come home, a long night of lullaby blues:
When they hit the pavement did they keep falling because gravity summons us
To our graves? Do you wonder why she begged you to pray with your palms bent skywards?
It was so that you would not feel his burn below. The morning light above blinds all
But our truth is different. He should have known not the fix what was never broken.
And now that his gravity has collapsed, she will fall upwards, forever skywards.
It's a different type of falling but she will raise a better morning in us all
And if stars must die to stay alive, maybe her sky wasn't the only one broken.
