Grey cinderblocks painted off-white, yellow
in the fluorescence of the plastic domed bulbs,
the bed rolls with the folds of a yellow comforter.
The room’s almost a backyard, green grass
in the way of a shag carpet, the outside world in stills,
and a caged animal in the form of a slight red headed girl.
A girl whose brilliant blue eyes are being eaten by dark pupils
as they eat the words of the book before her.
And eat, and eat. Monstrous their hunger,
these devourers of knowledge, forcing ink into sustenance.
Her eyes are just blue rings around black holes like molten ebony.
They are fey eyes, ringing of flashing will-o’-the wisps, of
the nymphs that drowned men in times of old,
beautiful and otherworldly dangerous. Full of the power of deep water.
Blue is the color of her knowledge, of the pill residue on her desk.
Of childhood sadness, and of being too quick for the world itself.
It’s the color of frustration, of a processing speed you wouldn’t know
from the dancing of those rings, so bright and curious.
Yellow is the light of the lamp after midnight,
of work through the witching hour, of an inability to sleep,
and it settles over the backyard like a sun.
It caresses her skin, caged animal of soft white
curves and fiery red hair, supple and brightly ornamented,
caresses the way she leans and stretches,
soft fluidity belied by the hard intensity of her eyes.
Homer’s Iliad lies open in her hands,
Sheets curled and shuddering like some caught prey
as she gazes into its depths, engrossed,
and no book has ever been so interesting.