Soft Landscapes

Plum to blue. Marigold to olive. The earth in gloaming, outside the windows of your car. The astronauts not only. You, pulling my shirt up so I’m bare against your chest in the morning. Arm a swam around your neck. And on the way to you, yesterday: the man at the airport who urged the mother with the toddler to board before the rest of us. The relief on her face. “She’s almost two,” she admitted. “Go ahead,” he replied, “No one minds.” Soft as jade sky behind mountains. And today, when I left you, in the press of a migraine—the kindness of the young man at the Hudson News who sold me a small box of Aleve. “You sure you don’t want the big one?” he asked, looking into my face. “Feel better, feel better,” his words a blessing drifting in his country. Mauve morning light, in several deepening layers.