Rainbow/

I quit praying for rainbows,​

The night I discovered you.​

I let my worries fall to the ground​

The way our clothes had.​

Shed off layers of that oily skin of a past​

And looked over your shoulder,​

At a future I desired. ​

On the nights when you were away,​

I packed away old doubts,​

Hung their slippery silhouettes,​

Silencing them with darkness.​

They obeyed limp as bats.​

As they slept, I waited.​

I am counting your absence​

Not in days, but rather by the pictures on the calendar.​

This month there is a blonde girl smiling on her bicycle,​

She mocks me like an angel.​

I believe she knows more than I ever did.​

Last week a neighbor brought me,​

A stained glass rainbow,​

I fastened to the window, but it refused to live​

It shattered like beautiful icing, ​

I wanted to lick off the floor, ​

As I remembered, ​

The tenderness you caused.​

Last night, I threw out the calendar.​

I couldn't stand that smile another day,​

The kind of smile that stretches across a face perfectly,​

The dazzling sort that catches light.​

As I turned over her smile in my hands ​

I found a rainbow.​

I laughed for hours at her clever secret, ​

I taped it to the fridge.​

People look at it funny,​

Think it is collage,​

It is just a way I like to remember.​