Blue Fading to White
A wintry wind blew
the color out of the sky that day
‘til it was as white
as my cousin’s corpse
contained in a coffin
inside the church sanctuary. I recalled
another day, sunlit sky sparkling
blue. I sat among family and friends,
remembering him,
not as a man, grown grim,
gun aimed at his own heart,
but how he glowed as a boy,
glistening skin tanned a ginger-
snap brown when he raced
across the high dive,
landing with a crash,
before vanishing under water
at the deep end of the pool.
Teresa Burns Murphy is the author of a novel, The Secret to Flying (TigerEye Publications). Her writing has been published in several places, including The Bookends Review, Chicago Quarterly Review, Doubleback Review, Evening Street Review, Gargoyle Magazine, Literary Mama, The Literary Nest, The Opiate, The Penmen Review, River and South Review, Slippery Elm Literary Journal, Southern Women’s Review, Sparks of Calliope, Stirring: A Literary Collection, The Word’s Faire, and The Write City Review. She earned her MFA from George Mason University and her EdD from the University of Memphis. Originally from Arkansas, she currently lives in Virginia. Visit her at https://www.teresaburnsmurphy.com
Image: Kritzolina, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
