These Hazy Days

Pale Green Walls

Quaking pale green walls—
A wind blows; shadows dance
Across the room, alien.
Below the light, bloated blossoms
Wreathe periwinkle vines—
Brittle chalk—plastic pots and pans.
You brush the manes of ponies,
Young.

Too young.
Skin wrinkles, crinkles
Like an old receipt—
Proof of a former life.
Because this can't have been it.
There had to have been more.

The mountains and the crag
Swept in fog and the day
You almost walked right off
The edge of the earth—
It's all so small now.
It's all so very small,
Small as this glowing room
That smells of whiteboard cleaner
And cherry cough drops—
The sickly-sweet kind
In the anemic rouge wrappers.

The downpour outside swells,
Folds the roof into neat stacks of
Dampened towels.
The flowers are growing,
Pressing paint-stained palms
To the plaster.

You look at your own palms,
At your fingertips and the hair
On your arms. You hate yourself.
Sickly-sweet cough drops
Coat your tongue. You
Spit four times in succession;
The cherry syrup stays.

You were never much
Of a painter, anyway.
You were never much at all.
Outside the pale green walls,
Your garden grows tall and rampant.
It cannot feed you any longer.