MELISSA F. KAELIN

★ ★ ★ ★

POETRY

The color of my experiences

How do I embrace the color of my experiences?
A magenta-to-melon gradient turned to cerulean blue.
This cold and collected feeling is not familiar to me,

Its strange limitations demand too much, and far too deep.
In this hue I am bound by my sorrows,

I am strapped to the rocks on the cliff of grief.

Nor could I fall or could I fly,

Instead static above a former lightness of being.

I was once the warmth in the sunrise,

Packing a cooler early to catch the morning light,
Skipping under the flicker of Autumn leaves —
Rocks as stepping stones. Cliffs for the view.
My feet were naked, exposed in the fir cones,
Snug in the pine needles coated in sap;

My toes were free in the muddy creek,

The rapids surging over red clay soil.

Now I am the chill in the evening,

Sitting idle in the periwinkle shade of doubt.
A cobalt cloud hovers over those near to me,
And torrential rain lingers in my eyes.
Even in a storm there are rainbows,

But the spectrum has grown more fragile here.
Loss has painted me in the tone of twilight,
Uplifted only by celestial beauty overhead.

a space

It’s not my fault
You are jealous of the Milky Way.
That you scowl when I ever so gently
Move to the already drawn curtains,
And open a French door,
Which leads into my darkness,
Our home galaxy —
A smattering of stars above the bed where you sleep.

Are you threatened by greatness?
By the vast and unknowing boundaries of the universe;
How countless suns shine,
Even when they are burning out.
Or dying inside. Or gone —
Having collapsed into the cosmos centuries ago?

Why wouldn’t you gaze —
Turning your head upward,
Lifting your eyes above your own likeness,
To stand beside me while I romanced the world in the dark?
A space is here for you.
I stepped first on the firm ground;
Quieted the unwanted voices,
With your comfort in mind.

I knew you were too small.
And yet, I thought it was beautiful —
Maybe you, like me, wanted to feel something,
To be reduced to a half a dozen feet.
A body of water and tissue, just molecules and genes.
Recognizing how tiny a human really is
In the face of light —
Under the dancing protons;
The constant conversation of the planets and moons.

Don’t blame me
For becoming something nocturnal —
A foreign look born into my eyes by day.
I’ve always loved the evening,
Known the time was my center,
The galaxy, my core.
But now I need more…
Than us.
To be larger than you.

There is nothing greater than
Our expanding sky.