about a blue-eyed boy

[handslikelilies]

I wrote this in Pit's class today. She asked us to address a poem to a child. I don't know why I ended up writing (unintentionally at first) to the boy that used to live next door to my friend, Liz, when I lived in New York...maybe he still does, I don't know why I put that in past tense, but I will leave it there as a tribute to some subconscious means. His name is Alex, he is a year younger than me. I never really liked him, rarely ever saw him. Sometimes Liz's and Alex's mothers would spend time together, and we children would go to Alex's basement to watch movies and play with his legos and trucks. Alex had something of a birth-defect or disease...I didn't know the name of it then, and my mother doesn't remember well enough to tell me, now, what it could have been. He couldn't breathe. That's what I remember of it. Alex could not breathe on his own. Maybe he still can't. I don't even know if he is still living. Either way, I feel this should be posted. I think it should be read. Something brought me to think of this boy...a boy I haven't recognized for nearly ten years. Something brought me to write to him, and to promise him more air than he has ever had on his own. So here's to Alex...wherever you are:

If I could, I would
wrestle the wind
from spring summer
fall and tie it up
tight with rainbow
ribbons, because someday
your favorite color won’t be
blue.

I would give you enough
air to hold
your kite between every winter
so that you could fly
between the snow-
flakes that sit on your lashes and melt
on your tongue.