Alive in the Black and Blues

KatieAnn Nguyen

8:36 p.m. 

the disco ball casts fragments of light across the room,

a basement with a vinyl record player playing some album from

the 50s; strings of light decorate the walls, in the corner

a poster of Elvis sags. there's a table of liquor by the door,

cd shards decorating the floor as people sway against sweaty

bodies; invisibility in darkness and drowning within alcohol,

yet you sit by the forgotten bookshelf with peeling paint.

sketching people as they dance, capturing them in their

ethereal happiness. you don't belong, and yet you do 

8:52 p.m. 

the world spins as you glide through the collection of books;

music echoes next to you, now just a blurred memory. in the

dim light, you make out titles you have never seen before.

your fingers dance along the smooth spines, and you pull one out,

the fault in between our stars by john green tumbles into your hands.

when you open it, the initials j.b.m. dance in swirly letters.

what are you doing here?'s reverberate in your mind when you

turn around, facing a boy with angelic features and soft whispers;

can i draw you?'s fall from your lips

9:17 p.m. 

let's get out of here's and devilish grins and diet cokes.

the world makes sense as the wind tussles your hair;

sandals slapping concrete as the two of you walk down

towards ocean breezes that encompass you as you scratch charcoal

against paper—and he does the same, lead against paper.

you sketch the way his eyes furrow slightly together, and he

writes about how beautiful you look in the moonlight in stanzas;

you're both artists committing each other to memory,

escaping from painful reality to an ephemeral worlds of dreams

10:23 p.m. 

your hands are stained with swipes of charcoal, fingerprints

peppering the paper. you watch as your pencil forms strands

of hair, until looking back at you are the same doe eyes that sparkle

in the moonlight. his chin haplessly rests in his palm,

his journal tucked beside him, papers blowing with the breeze.

he’s memorizing you into lines, forming you into words and

metaphors and symbols. what's your name?'s fall from his vocal cords

and wouldn't you like to know?'s fall from yours

11:05 p.m.

the moon peers from above, pearly luminescent rays shine

upon the two of you, who walk side by side, towards a party

you forgot existed, because you don't belong there

with the vinyl music, the disco ball sheen, the sagging posters.

you belong here, in the cold sand that tickles your toes, the

charcoal that stains your hand black, the smell of paper that

makes you feel alive, you belong where the dreamers go; 

let's stay a little longer's pulls the two of you along, back onto

the sea-ridden beach that calls to you, and when the icy water

jolts you awake, you are alive 

11:50 p.m. 

someday's tumble from his lips like jewels,

and you pick each one up carefully, rearranging each to create

a collage of adornments. and you feel blessed in that fragment of

night that belongs to just the two of you. stroking his feathery strands

of hair, that feel every bit of the charcoal swipes you sketched.

he's sandalwood and broken promises and cherished moments wrapped

in a pretty disguise, but you're innocent heartbreak and gentle tears

and flowing longing tied into an eloquent figure; and the two of you

dream with one another, because you come alive in the iridescence

of black and blues—holding tight to the desires of someday 

12:00 a.m. 

leaving is harder when you're on the highs of euphoria, 

but the two of you manage to break your reveries, because you're both meant

for doom anyway—two artists colliding for the same daydream don't

last, not when the two of you are off flying in the stars above.

and you walk in silence back to the party, feeling the rhythm throb

inside your mind as your steps reverberate with depleting energy.

you reach the door and turn to him, he looks at you with the same

notion of one of a lost poet, and you recognize the longing written

in the pupils of his eyes; here you go's drop like falling rain when you

hand him your drawing, because ephemeral things only last so long,

he does the same, placing a paper folded in half into your delicate hand.

j.b.m. initials yours and p.k.l. initials his 

12:48 a.m. 

waves crash upon each other like fleeting memories; fighting and falling,

until they have become one, eventually disappearing among the rest.

and you know it’s the same with you and him, don’t you? to your heart,

you hold his words, knowing he’s doing the same to yours. and you sigh,

walking towards the twinkles of the ocean, and placing his poem flat out 

onto the waves, watching as his words melt into the sea, and your fragment

of him dissolves, carried away in the memory of the black and blues