The Color of a Summer Breeze
by Julia Cai
Everything is made out of dust; I can see it
and when I sit down, hard, I can feel myself tenderly
float to the bottom of me, like salt and silt in a mud-soaked river.
I keep my father’s ashes in a jam jar
although he deserves sweeter.
He was always an apple man, not a strawberry one,
I was allergic to both. He shattered on the concrete last night
and washed away in the blue rain. It’s a beautiful summer,
the kind you waste away waiting for the next.
Wherever you are, I’m sure there’s something primal about it.
No matter how much I try I can never mellow out.
I used to believe that the sky is blue
and I still try to. But when the world shivers off dust and ash
I can't even believe in gravity.
I take a hammer to the sky and cracks spindle out
like flocks of flies after they’ve devoured their rot
and blood blooms dark and brusque like the night:
I've caught my finger.