the car next to us was blue or purple, neither, the color of waking in the children’s hospital. The nurse floated a translucent blue-purple cloud over my forehead, someone said there now she’s awake, and I was. What was in her fist? Because the color of something lost when I was four floats forth and parks next to us, next to me, I stare from the passenger’s side window at the purple-blue hood of the car where rain and paint chips distract me toward something else, the present honing in on the present, the parking lot, my wet shoes, a mosquito bite on my thigh, the dark-haired man in a salmon polo shirt and black horn-rimmed glasses watching me stare—
he is my age, I think—he climbs out of the car and follows my gaze with his, which by now is on his face, his eyes. It is twilight, just after rain, and his salmon shirt is beautiful in this light which is smoky and violet, same as the car. What was it she had in her hand? I asked my mother. The nurse, what was it? He wants to know what I’m looking at. Rain on his shirt, his shirt clings to his skin. His eyes are very dark, his brows and lashes thick and dark like Zali’s,
Zali who knocks on his own forehead to make a point, who says from across the table where we used to sit: this dirt you don’t burrow past. His face makes a face, a blind mole. He digs at the air, knocks on his forehead. I think the man in the salmon shirt beautiful. He doesn’t see what I see, he is concerned now and holding my gaze and saying something to the woman getting out of the driver’s side of the violet blue car. I am sealed behind glass. They are soundless. The woman turns to look at me, is thinking: what are you
looking at? Something borrowed, something blue. I asked my mother, what did she have in her hand? Nothing, what do you mean?--she had nothing in her hand. Zali waves his fist, says: write your book, find your love. Yes there was something there, I need to know what woke me. The color of a crucible of violets. I don't know what that means. I woke violently, I woke with my eyes. They look at me, man and woman, I've nursed something from them. No sweetie, there was nothing, it was nothing. I'm sorry, I say. Of course they can't hear me.
