Are You Feeling Unwell?

This is dedicated to my gramps.

One second I'm a sunset crossing Judith Peak

Orange and gold cascade along a green border

Blue grama sweeps through endless car rides in long breaths

Lungs filled entirely of prairie flowers

Scent seeping into red seats

Narrow dirt roads chased by wild horses

10 mph around triangle corner

Telling stories of when your aunt gracefully dumped the truck in the ditch

Then just like blue sky becomes grey storms it was gone

Emotions crackle from cloud to cloud in high voltage screams

Tears flooding my childhood home with the white trim

Yearning for the taste of over-buttered toast

My voice like the scratchy radio sitting by your chair

You tell me he's in a better place

It's better that he's gone

You didn't know the way his eyes gleamed with tenderness when he checked my temperature

His words guided me in a toy sailboat when he told a story

Rugged hands rubbing the worries of tree knots out of your back

Ears listening to your junior high girl fights

You don't understand that as his body becomes green grass meadows

I become the darkness that sweeps over at night

Leaving old Chevy trucks in nothing but parts and pictures

Wintergreen tobacco with bittersweet tastes of death and hospital straps

Dirt clouds slowly disperse.

To become one with the earth and rot

Seeds of my love sprouting into lilies

To leave as the only trace that I ever existed