✨ I Think of You, Eréndira
Everything glass...
I Think of You, Eréndira
after Gabriel García Márquez
I was in love. Everything glass I touched turned blue.
Every orange I opened revealed a diamond. Somewhere
a cricket played and played. The trees dimmed their lights
so gradually, I hardly noticed. What I mean is that I loved
everything. Everyone knew from the blue vases, the blue
figurines. From oranges hiding jewels you could crack
a tooth on. From the cricket’s music chipping away
the air between us. From darkness verging slowly
as the trees lowered their lights. I was in love
with everything then. Even my windows went blue
as sea glass, and through them so did the streets,
the bicycles, the birds. The view startled like a diamond
inside an orange. One night the cricket finished boring
through the air to me. But before I could see him,
the trees went dark and took me with them.
—Maggie Smith
✨ This poem is in honor of our September theme: Turn & Turn Again
From The Well Speaks of Its Own Poison: Poems, Tupelo Press, Copyright © 2015. Used by permission of the poet. Photo by Shiva Hemmat, Creative Commons, via Unsplash.
"Even my windows went blue
as sea glass, and through them so did the streets"
Seasonal Change
Everything visible was turning:
summer’s light slowing
into afternoon’s darkness,
air startled cold, cracking skin.
Soon, the trees would all grow
skeletal, and the crickets, done
with boring, become as silent
as the fog rising from the river
in the distance. Everything,
everywhere, taking on the blues
that autumn’s swift shift
toward winter soon enough
would make clear. And you,
who’d hardly noticed I was
in love, wearing a diamond
shimmering like sea glass
in sand, would upraise the blind
between us, slice an orange
in half, set its white seeds in
ground without thinking
of what was, had dimmed.