I Wanted Rainbows For You

You are the sum of your dream minus the reality that you've found here.

If A is the grey day to day of an eight-person household
in a home built for five,
with a shell where a mother was,
and a television never silenced -
this is your family now,
and they're as broken as the one you came from -
you remember yourself and sisterlings biting back to cause tears,
but these pieces of matched femininity,
perfect modern military brides
have married a stoicism usually reserved for generals
as they send their best and brightest to the fire.

Then B is the grit and dust of a Manhattan skyline,
a brunette you can no longer touch.
She's a page from a vision you had,
all black coats and berets,
burning cherries and tattooed angels down under the El -
You think she said, 'take the F train' -

you blinked
and found something that was supposed to be better,
so she stands a temptation in pearls.

You draw her static between your fingers,
a faint pop of neon against the distinct black and whites of the whats
This is.

A muse is to temptation
as amuse is to laughter

You think she might be sick on sweets,
she knows you're sick of the rain.

I digress.

If A is just Asquared, but minus B,
that's only Zero,
the scariest of imaginary numbers.

Imaginary numbers are messy,
they don't suit our standard equations or engineered algorithms,
they fall into string theory which has 12 dimensions
and no common thread binding them all together but your biology -
which is love -
which is an imaginary number,
Clementine.

It's messy.
You can only try to keep yourself clean.