Blue Days
For Meme
Meme called them her, “blue days.”
I didn’t know what that meant then, but I remember her sayin’ it.
“Meme, are you all right?” Momma would ask.
“Oh yes, dahlin’. I’m just havin’ one of my blue days. I’m all right.”
Now I know.
I hate them.
They just cycle through, don’t they?
One minute all’s fine.
Clear skies.
And then you feel it—like the pull your sneaker gives against the pavement as you realize you’ve stepped in somebody’s wad of pink Bubblicious gum.
Step, stick,
step, stick.
As someone who has a touch of that depression, I know the feeling all too well.
Maybe it’s the rain.
It’s been coming down in buckets in the A.
I’ve taken to calling her, “Atlantis.”
Maybe it’s the slow rhythm of the coming summer.
Maybe it’s the smallness you feel moving through the streets full of people whose lives are happening simultaneously and apart from you.
Maybe it’s the screaming quiet of the house when you get in from work:
“you’re all alone with these houseplants!”
It’s like blueberry pancake syrup on a white shirt.
You go in for a sweet mapley, fruity bite of that yummy short stack—
(falls from fork onto shirt)
(sigh)
“Fuck.”
I spill things.
I didn’t used to.
I like to think I was in a perfectly normal range of spillage.
Then the boy cursed me, “you spill everything.”
It took.
I do.
Anyway, when you go to spray and wash that shirt, that sweet blueberry shit is everywhere.
EVERYWHERE.
A spot here, another on the back, one at the hem, the neck line—how the hell did that get there?
Days like that you’re just caught in the rain outside church,
in your best suit,
with a wind-busted umbrella.
Just licked.
And that’s how it is—
I don’t have a roadmap outta those.
I can’t divine how they come or why.
I wish I knew.
Sometimes I guess we’re just blue for a bit—
That really should be the song, “it’s not easy bein’ blue.”
Cause it’s sure not, "ba-ba-dee, ba-ba-di”—I’m kidding I couldn’t resist.
When we would leave our visit with Meme,
we’d tell her bye,
and take the elevator down.
We’d walk ‘cross the parking lot
and get in the car.
As we’d drive past, we’d look up.
And there she’d be—
Just out on her balcony—
blowin’ us blue kisses.
xo