I am completely in blue today.
   "Rhapsody in Blue," you murmur. I shake my head.
   "No, just blue."
   "Nothing is 'just' anything with you."
   Blue because it's the color of the sky when I'm happiest, water (the same shade as the sky), the cover of my favorite book-of-the-moment (I'm always reading something different), and my cousin's eyes.
   Red is your favorite color because it's the color of autumn leaves, fire, your mother's hair, and the ink I'm using (it's smudging onto my hands).
   We Summer Salt dizzily through the ocean tide. You find red coral and I find my blue water.
   "Mix blue and red and what do you get?" I ask.
   "Purple..." you answer hesitantly. I grin.
   "I never really liked purple," I tell you.
   "Really?"
   "Really."
   "Hmmm..."
   You distract me by kissing me long and hard until our swollen lips are painted with faint purplish bruises. I'm flushed and out of breath. Your eyes sparkle. "How could you not like purple? It means us." Your thumb gently brushes my lips. I shiver.
   "Well, since you're so persuasive, maybe I like it a little more..." I smile and reach for you again.

   A month later, your favorite color is green. You tell me because it's the color of clean grass, traffic lights letting you go, California palm fronds, and the color my toenails are painted.
   I know you're lying. I see the way you look at me when I talk to other people. It's because green means envy.
   I tell you it's still blue for me. Blue because it's what they call it when you're sad - The Blues. I sense another traffic light color, but not green, yellow. A yellow that's telling us we're slowing down.

   Two months after that, you tell me
- your favorite color is pink only because it's Her favorite color,
- you're sorry about leaving those bruises - purple ones - on my inner thighs the very last night we shared a bed, when it was all fueled by frustration and pain,
- you don't love me anymore and don't know how to tell me except to say just that - "I don't love you,"
- purple used to mean us, but now it doesn't. It means you and Her.
   But I know that pink and pink won't make purple like blue and red used to.
   I don't cry for you until you leave the house, leave me.
   But it's still blue. Blue because it was the color of the sky when I was happiest, a color I never see anymore, crushed blueberries that were spilled in the sink and I never bothered to pick up because they stain my fingers, and a blue jay sitting on the naked winter branch in a tree, singing.

   A blue ocean of tears and five times as many sunny days later, I see you again. You're with Her. She's beautiful and her stomach is round and her shirt is pink and her eyes are brown. You're holding her hand and looking so happy.
   It's still blue for me. It's always been blue, even if you weren't always red or green or pink. It's blue because it's a primary color and can stand by itself, it's the color of the flowers blooming in the park (and one in my hair), the ribbon I won for the story not about you, and my worn-in denim. With or without you, it's always been blue. I smile and don't even wonder what your favorite color is now.

No one asks where I am from.
I make up to seven coffee runs a day
for up to eleven different people.
I cannot afford the Prada pumps,
nor walk in them, for that matter.
But Dad's old brown loafers,
with the stitching coming undone
along the sides,
are good enough for me.

No one can speak my name.
If they did, they wouldn't be able
to pronounce it anyway.
I know four languages,
none of them American.
When spoken to, I answer in strained English,
the sharp sounds tripping over my tongue.

What they say must be true;
I am meant only to carry a clipboard,
to fetch papers
spitting viciously out of a machine,
to correct other people's mistakes
on Documents of Importance
being sent up to the Big Guy.
The Blackberries buzz,
a hive of bees
in three-pieces and pencil skirts.

No one knows that when Connor Carpenter told me
to hold his Blackberry while he went
to the copier room with Sydney Applebaum,
"in case my wife calls,"
I e-mailed the entire department
(plus his wife),
telling them just what
the copier room was being used for.
In the ladies' room,
Blackberry trembling madly
as it lay in the toilet,
I went to wash my hands.

1. Adam
Your red, your feet, your shoulders; this is how you carried the world. I used to wish I could curl into your ribs like a seed and wait to be something beautiful as you.

2. Christian
Four years ago, you wrote me a song. It was full of bad chords and brass and bass and blaspheme. You gave me the shirt off your back, just so I could dry the bench beneath the oak tree. Untamed, you are better than you think you are.

3. David
He who hurled the first stones of all the first kisses you could never give me. He who struck down the mighty Goliath, the blind beast, blundering around in my chest. He who came too late as Babylon was falling.

4. Felix
Your unlaced shoes and unwound scarf and warm warm hands. I will comb your hair and button your coat and forever spell your name s-m-i-l-e.

5. Nathan
I wanted your sea glass eyes and your bike on the rain-wet pavement. I wanted to press my palms to your holy temples and learn how to pray. You took my ink stains and my weak weak pride faithfully. I never knew how to love a prophet.

6. Jon
You have written history. You live and love and protect like fire. You have more dreams than stars in the sky. You are not a martyr, but Boy, you will live forever.

7. Paul
You told me one time that my smile made the sun come out, and I decided to believe you.

8. Gabriel
You are not angel, but boy. You still believe in redemption and have faith in second, third, fourth chances. Water-winged watcher, thank you for that week of joy.

9. Solomon
Protector and fighter, you share with me your bread, your sweet. You will be a wondrous king.

10. Philip
You open the earth. The swans fall from the sky, and the ghosts of lost girls come up to hold my hand when I am with you. I see my flight, my fall, the boundaries of the universe in your eyes.

11. Joshua
I would follow you to the end of it all, to the last of the crumbling city. I will wait for you with fingers woven together like a rosary.  

12. Peter
You are my savior, each and every day, now and forever. You are my rock, my anchor, my bravest beacon. You are my home.  

13. Daniel
Babylon boy, I whisper your name like a prayer.