Blue

By Nancy Stephan

It’s the gloomy harvest gold
that swallows an entire house
on a hot boring summer day

when your mom won’t get out of bed
even though it’s two in the afternoon
and the square-faced fan has been blowing
its hot breath across her face since nine last night.

Never mind that you crossed Grant Street
on your bike and spent the morning at the Village
and talked to plenty of strangers
and bought goo gobs of candy 
with the quarters you took from her purse

or that you rode from Grant
past Gleason all the way to Broadway
and back. Hungry you came home
and fixed yourself a pot of coffee
and got into her records and danced
and drank and drank and danced.

Never mind that completely bored
you climbed into bed next to her 
and without waking up
she rolled over and wrapped a warm arm
of safety around you.

And there you lay 
the two of you
in the amber glow of dusk
music belting from the turntable. 
Never mind that she loves you.

Nancy Stephan writes poetry and nonfiction. She placed ninth in the Writer’s Digest Short Story Contest and won a Georgia Author of the Year Award (GAYA) in 2012, for her memoir, The Truth About Butterflies. She earned her B.S. in Communication and M.A in Creative Writing from Kennesaw State University. Born and raised in Gary, IN, Nancy now lives in Metro Atlanta.