I Was Scared

I Am Standing in the Fog When You Accidentally Call

And I just can't seem to turn off the sound of her laughter the same way I just can't seem to remember the lights from the summer carnival since everything turned cold. The blues that August promised, Cyan, Azure, Baby, wash out in October like clothes beaten against a wet stone until my own skin forgets the right way to wear last year's jacket, this winter's coat. (It is only going to get colder.) Eton, Royal, True, none of these colors match your eyes as you scan the fog out your window, an obscured town too small to tuck your secrets in. You are drunk in grief and I am drunk on you. I am not your only secret and you are not mine, but the fog, somehow, shrinks the world around us into nothing more than a conversation I was never meant to hear. Powder, Prussian, Persian, these blue monsters tickle my phone as I stop in the fog and refuse to hang up. I call you a monster because tonight you are one, but I am one, too. I lie. I lie. I lie. Your eyes. My sadness, a great, crackling weight much too unruly to display in jars and charge admission. It's almost funny, in the fog, a mist creamed around me, that I never imagined I'd be the Other Woman, someone's wife once and still, almost married twice, with a dresser heavy in the blues of courtship. Tiffany, Sapphire, Tiffany. Tiffany. Ella, Louis, Billie, the blues overtake me as I listen, how my chilled ear forces the expanse of my longing against my phone to memorize the way you make her laugh, and in the fog this laughter making me wonder what between you, with every monster let out of their cages so long ago, could still be funny.