Blue Boy

Gingko Leaves and Beautyberry Seeds Earthworks Exhibition Marie Miller

Blue Boy Therese Villarubia

Streetlamps make the car slippery with shine. It trundles down the long black roads at a tilt; inside are a girl with her pink happiness and a boy with his mentality colored blue. We talk and we laugh until our chests shake. Mom and Grandmom swoop the white slip under the corners of the table and click the remaining smile-pieces into their face-puzzle.

Blue boy and I head into the basement, dump the pieces onto the table, and puzzle over the weirdness of the real adults upstairs with their eyes all a-shine.

We talk and we laugh until our stomachs ache and shake. I reach out to the powdery bookshelves and cluttered slats, shaking the slip until dust clouds make me cough up a storm and he tilts his sadness away until it dyes the floorboards blue.

I snap the image into existence, piece by piece, and around the trim, it’s bright blue. He rifles through musty and watermarked pages until I call him to help me with our puzzle. I hand over a tiny woven heart, like a blossom in bloom, and we slip the threads back together and watch the yarn curl and tilt on top of the table with its rickety legs like old man’s knees and bald head’s shine. He snorts and I quake and muffled giggles make the house shake.

We stumble up the stairs, knocking into each other, and shake the hand of my mother, her eyes blue and welcoming and shiny. We slide onto our seats while she tilts cake slices onto our plates, with their chocolate shine. Grandmom snaps blurry pictures and we puzzle out what we were saying or doing in that time-slip.

He’s nervous; his hand slips on the fork while the silverware shakes and the light on the spoon like a sun-spot shines. I pull on my hat while he taps his foot and puzzles over the weirdness of women. His eyes are too blue and too intense; I turn my head away at a shy tilt.

We stroll down the hill, lowering into the ground with a tilt. I lift my head and slip my hands into my pockets. We patch constellation puzzles together until our lips are blue. Cold burrows into our bones and we huddle and shake. Darkness is punctured here and there with golden lamp’s firefly-shine.

He’s a blue boy while the night presses in, and I’m ready to stay, let my pink happiness slip and mingle with his mentality colored blue. My mind tilts and levels, and my hands shake but not with cold. He’s my puzzle and I know this, so I shine.