Her Watercolor Depression

She brews her own
because she likes to see
Sepia seeping up
She cannot sleep so she
Needs coffee to keep her eyes –
brown ringed around soft green
– awake

 

At night I am the coffee bean
Ground up
Pressed through a film of paper
Cleaner and clearer when I speak
Not so gritty, because it might
 give her heartburn if I
had no filter.
 

Instead my lips hide behind tense, monitored silence
Words come out of my eyes
eyes she does not see
because it molds her like clay, folds her into a ball
turns her away from me

 

So I go home
where her ears cannot see me and her eyes cannot hear me no one can hear me
and my hands, my eyes, my lips all speak at once
 

Hot drops squeeze from my eyes, drowning irises blue
(concentrated at the curved edges and dripping in toward the black hole)
I didn't ask for them to come
but I don't fight
 

the loops and spikes I penned to the page, dissolving
Blue separating into motionless ripples of color,
tinged dark at the ragged edges and bleeding
through the bleached and pounded tree pulp
 

Paper, fragile skin, bruised but not yet
broken – I can save it if I’m careful
Do not touch the salt-watercolor
Words could snag and form tears
 

Wait.
Give her time
And do not leave her
She knows you are there though she does not see
On the worst days, I have seen her – she spits
But tomorrow she will smile and her eyes will thank me
for the note I left on her desk saying “I love you”
Though we will speak not a word of it.