Blue

Zack Graham

Ever since I could remember I’ve been terrified of the color blue.

Now I’m not sure if it was born out my fear of the ocean

or if it had more to do with my grudge against the sky.

Once I realized it was it that tortured the waters below

forcing them into different shades of blue whenever it so chose.

I knew for sure though that the color never felt quite right.

Now along with growing up with my irrational fear of colors

I had a family that spread out across the medical field.

Canvassing four aunts, three cousins, an uncle, and a mother

who spent so long in a graveyard labor and delivery shift

you would swear that dusk and dawn owe her a little more

than exhausted mothers and the faint lull of crying babies.

Most nights to keep her going she gives chubby newborns

nicknames like Doug and Mufasa making her laugh

only the way 3 a.m. could.

More often than not she finds the most promise

in quiet hospital hallways she rarely gets to see.

So in hindsight with all that knowledge

you think the gene pool would hold tight

for future offspring ambitions.

It was my second clinical, not ten minutes after

realizing the similarities between the snapping of a tree branch

and the feeling of a dislocated elbow nestled quietly between my palms

that I now find my fingers locked atop a woman’s chest

crushing every bone she gave way to raising three kids

who want nothing more than my hands to try and save her,

try and save her, I whisper.

Some say the quickest route to a flashback is through sound.

For me that sound has always been my hands hitting flesh,

forcing me to remind myself of my own demise

via sound effects on repeat.

I realize stained ultimatums and softball size holes in the wall

can reappear at any time.

It will feel exactly like seven beers, 1:30 a.m.

and the TV showing that one part in Southpaw

that mimics you perfectly at seventeen,

you know the one where you spent six dark hours in your closet

crying because they stole the only thing that you knew for sure you loved.

You will come to when the lead doctor is yelling for you to switch out,

but you keep pushing on her chest.

Please someone bless these ruins we created inside her

by chasing fleeting airspace and aspirations

that truly may have never belonged to us in the first place.

After prying myself from her chest, sweat stained knuckles and all

a nurse pulls me aside says kid,

maybe you got too much heart for a job like this,

this is place that will always take more than it gives back

and even if you’re ready for it, it doesn’t make it any easier.

I stared quietly as three kids watched their mother slip further into nothingness.

Three minutes later they called it.

At Holy Family Hospital when someone is dying

they call it “a code blue.”

Today my seven-year-old self is reminded exactly

why blue is still the scariest color I know.

Zack Graham has been writing poetry for over a decade. Driven by the poetry scene in Spokane, WA, for much of his adult life, he has felt the rush of performing on stages around the country and finding a creative outlet to express himself. He is a former Spokane Poetry Grand Slam Champion, and has competed in the Individual World Poetry slam and The National Poetry slam. He owes most of his talent to his father, his passionate mother, and relentless high school poetry teacher. His writing is influenced by life experiences and the world around him.