shades of blue

Yellow moon low in the sky. Its edges bleed out, paint on wet paper, refracting in blooming rectangles off sheets of rain. You’re crouched in the grass under a highway overpass. The din falls onto you. Below you, the thirsty earth drinks its fill.

Sunday morning sun fell in shards, settling, trembling, at the bottom of the baptism pool. When they dunked you under, you opened your eyes. Behind your fractured pastor, baby Jesus stared down at you in stained glass. Rain is unusual in November, but that day you had barely toweled dry when warm water ran again in rivulets down your arms and legs. As it hit the ground, it rose again, petrichor and the sharp smell of fresh tar, turned to glimmering steam in the watery light of the early afternoon.

Bathed twice that day in holy water and still nothing to show for it.

In a parking lot in 2015 there was a dip, gradual, in the pavement, and when it rained, the center became a black lake ringed by a black shore, throwing a quivering yellow reflection of the streetlights overhead onto the fronts of your calves. This was the only place left for you after the librarian told you it was really time to go. You’re hunched in the shadow of a rooftop overhang with overflowing gutters, a cigarette between your fingers, a book tucked under your jacket.

The sun rises. It climbs through your window and shatters against your wall. An hour ago, he screamed at you from the sidewalk outside, bathed in sodium light and the morning’s first shades of blue, and you stared down at him, mute, feeling how you imagine it must feel to be an empty jar, freshly washed.

Instead of going to French you buy a cappuccino and walk to the park. Dew rests on the edges of leaves. Briefly, time’s arrow slows. It’s the first day of spring.