Years Ago You Coloured Me
Another clean, clear-sighted day.
In the ivy sparrows are chatting,
though to look at it you wouldn’t know.
Many things are like that;
keeping their secret light under a bushel,
their confidentialities camouflaged
under green and yellow leaves.
Years ago you took your crayon set and coloured me,
but on the inside where it doesn’t show.
Mostly I forget now, except at dusk
when the evening’s striped with blue
and I find myself stained the same colour.
Then when I try to get some sleep
the cloud drowned moon pulls at my gut,
drawing memories in her wake.
Your long abandoned absence hugs my side
and the empty place beside me
has space enough to snuff
any candle I could light
against the coming of the dark.
Then comes missing you in the morning.
Waking up with the knowledge you are long gone,
leaving my world cold and strangely orange.
I keep my daytime thoughts to black and white.
Straight jacketed and numb
they run ahead on preset lines
avoiding unnecessary colour.
By afternoon my world is safely monochrome
until I notice the ivy, yellow and green,
in which brown sparrows play and chatter,
but not loud enough to drown your shrieking absence
heard by my ears alone,
In much the same way that only I
can see your fading colours,
feel their echoes tattooed inside of me.
J.S.Watts
"Years Ago You Coloured Me" is the title poem
from the poetry collection of the same name
by J.S.Watts
Lapwing Publications (2016) ISBN 9781910855157
©J.S.Watts
