I Erase What I See by Celeste Schueler
I bought my daughters kaleidoscopes
From a toy shop in Seattle.
An Indigenous totem pole stands in Pioneer Square
Among the trees and buildings.
I saw you speaking with blue in your mouth
I wanted to kiss it out. To take that blue and
Write you a poem with a broken pencil.
I’ll eat lead and fix you a casserole.
The winter is coming and my daughters complain
About the wind and the wind has followed us.
I wonder if we dissect kaleidoscopes
We will find blue.
Blue like in the Blue Jay or the Stellar Jay.
I am always comparing you to birds.
Our walls are littered with family pictures––
Wedding pictures in Mississippi then the four of us
In Oklahoma and Washington.
The spruce and pine smelled so strongly
Outside the coffeeshop.
I can write about other things.
I do not have to write about mental illness.
I can write how your hands have the most slender
Fingers and the way it feels when you pick up our daughters
The fluid motion of you smelling their hair.
I can write the distance between us and our families.
How the word family feels in my mouth and the
Changes that have come over ten years.
I can write our hands clasped into existence and how
You cut roses just for me.