Ink Wash

 

 

 

Ink Wash 

Eliza Rudalevige 

 

She knew how every color tasted and blue was her favorite. 

Blues like moistly misty mornings, 

mosquitos dancing in a haze of left-over campfire and condensation. 

Blue settled softly over sloped tents 

then fading into husky, grass-fed violet 

the same color as lavender fields at dawn 

where sheep with wool like kindness roam over the stubble. 

Violet, second only to blue 

and orange third only to violet; 

midday skies and crushed grapes and papaya curry 

swirled in a cacophony of pigment, 

a tinted tornado. 

Thunderous green emerges with eyes like jade set in enamel. 

Lily pad green, 

pine trees in the morning green, 

dictionary green, 

fading into lemon-scented freshness and 

spraying light like fresh juice. 

 

Then the white. 

Pillowcases hanging on the line to shed their creases. 

Salt crystals on her upper lip after soaks in the sea 

where jellies float as soft as snow 

and rest their sting on unsuspecting knees. 

Majority white, 

peach fuzz white, 

every color compressed into a single prick of white: 

violet, orange, yellow, green. 

Yes, blue was her favorite, 

but she savored every one.