Mom picks over the blues to find
the barely discernable line
where sky meets clouds. I push
around the reds of the Indian Paintbrush.
She slides me an odd-shaped piece,
mostly green, with the tiniest ruby tip.
Those, she says, are often the hardest
to find, but make the biggest difference.
We have done this for decades, traded
tessellating bits of flowers or castles
or horses or sky. We have interlocked
the bodies of wolves and assembled
mountains and rivers, all the while chatting back
and forth about whatever subjects rise—
which is often something falling apart,
a dream unmet, a breaking heart.
We always begin with the straight edges,
creating the puzzle’s frame. Perhaps
it’s a comforting pretense—that the world
can be edged in. Tonight, the reds
get the better of me. I can make nothing fit.
I try and retry to piece them together
and the holes and knobs resist. But
our conversation surges on despite my
ineptitude. It blossoms in the puzzles cracks,
all those holes unfilled—our talk spills
across whatever boxes we might want
to catch it in. Our losses and wonders
slip from our lips like the clouds
in this jigsaw scene, from blue into deeper blue.
It all seems the same somehow, the sorrow,
the gladness, the then, the now, the doing,
the not doing, the borders, the holes,
as if we’re all part of an infinite,
uncontrollable, ever-changing weather,
but what do I know of forever.
