Somewhere in the blue sky flag days
With sibilant sounds of rustling spring leaves,
I find myself in the Loft
Staring at the walls painted with a color called Pale Oak.
I never would have picked it.
But I love it.
I am not an interior decorator.
I am not a lot of things.
This room has a life of its own.
It breathes calm.
It inhales a solid silence
As it exhales children’s smiles,
Stealing sadness from my psyche.
It brings the outside in
With hums of airplanes and distant freeways
Riding upon the gentle winds
Through its open windows.
A motorcyclist cuts between cars.
Then rides the road’s shoulder.
Their eyes gleam, and they grin.
So that their teeth are stuck with flies.
Because they beat the cars to the exit off the 405.
The Loft didn’t care. Nor did I.
We didn’t have teeth filled with flies.
And we didn’t drive off the road into the ditch.
OOPS.
We laughed together over this,
The Loft and I.
Perhaps we shouldn’t have
But we did.