The Bluest Blue

Published in 1997 issue of  "Damaged Goods Magazine", Los Angeles, California. 


She sat beside me on the couch, face flushed with love.
"Tell me again how blue my eyes are."
How could I say? I'm no good at metaphors. I'd have used the "limpid pools" phrase, which I read in some poem. But the pools I've seen have always been covered with algae, and I don't even know what "limpid" means.

    What could I tell her?

Your eyes are like purest lapis lazuli?

Or violet buds on a warm April day?

And tropical shores whose water is lapping

Beneath the soft skies which hold earth in their sway?

"I gotta go to the bathroom, " I said. "I'll tell you when I get back."

And there, in the bathroom, I saw it- her blue, the perfect blue, a blue which Ulyssees might have left Greece for: the blue of the "Two Thousand Flushes" fresh in the bowl. Like robins' eggs, but with so much more mmphh.

"I can't tell her this, " I thought as I pissed, amber arcing into aqua-marine. "She'll kill me, at worst; or at best, think I'm joking."

"Honey, what's taking you?" she asked through the door.

"Be right there, babe, " I said, but I stayed awhile, and flushed, and watched the cobalt strains swirl down toward some secret heart.