They say to keep alive the memory of the ones you’ve lost
but do they tell you the cost
of remembering while also trying to raise the dead?
And haven’t we already lost so much
while gracing our way
through this incomprehensible world?
We are born to lose
everything
and it’s beautiful, this mysterious fate
always on the brink of the unknown.
I think of this as I sprawl upon the wide lush green
above the earthen plot we buried you
that measured space which separates the living from the not.
And it’s funny how they call sadness the blues
the most beautiful color.
And I think of poured paint
as I lose myself in this radiant blue sky
so empty
in which the light could swallow me day after day.
And I think how I would be perfectly happy this way
empty and blue and lovely
a canvas primed for the art of memory.
But first, let me write my story
etched in lines across my length of skin.
Blue is a primary color
like sadness.
Consider a baby’s first sounds
that primal cry into the great ether
that rattles a mother’s heart to love.
Tell me your memories
the ones you keep alive—
the ones that keep you alive.
What makes you blue?
What makes you terrible and primal
beautiful and alive?
Christen Lee is a family nurse practitioner in Cleveland, Ohio. Her writing has been featured in the Cleveland Humanities Festival poetry collaborative, Literary Cleveland’s Voices from the Edge Anthology, Rue Scribe, The Write Launch, and Aurora – The Allegory Ridge Poetry Anthology.
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