Years Ago You Coloured Me

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