My Name

Amelia is my name

It is an unbroken sort of thing

It is the rosy pink of a bashful face;

Of a bitter winter day spent on a snowcapped mountain.

It is the dripping wet glove placed on a petrol heater to dry

I was named after the famous Amelia Earheart

She too a hardworking girl who dreamed of touching cumulous clouds

Like her Amelia was that of an azure sky, where goldenrod cranes flutter.

It is the still water under a black blanket night

It is the smell of a long-forgotten cigarette embedded in a toddlers car seat

My name is the wind running through a dusty sheet of my childhood bedroom

It is the dewy cracks and arid smell of a parking garage

It is the peeling turquoise linoleum that covers countertops

It’s the feel of industrial-made plastic shoes that leave you with satin scars.

My name is the worn periwinkle princess dress;

A sparkle in a child's eyes

My name is the texture of an ammonite shell,

Retaining the groves of the waves she's long traveled.

My name is the swimming of feet in a sandstone basement

It is the patchwork apron, its pockets filled with faded flour

My name smells of underdone cookie dough eaten despite the eggs.

My name tastes of a salty sea

of sweet Jam on Christmas morning.

My name is the flavor of a strawberry milkshake,

of vinegar fries and tomato paste.

It is the perfume of late fall evenings and the hollow sound of a bamboo windchime.

It is the jingling bell of a broken charm bracelet

My name is the lissom beat of 50s music heard from cherry red barstools.

My name is the moment you sail off the trampoline

It is the blue hour that stills the land of dawn;

the moment when the world stops.

My name is Amelia and I am whole

And one day I'll forget

In spring your eyes where the color of life

You smelt of dirt and dead spiders

Of rusted copper bed frames and rotting violets but I don’t mind

The day it reached 30 you would buy steak strips in your worn Walmart shoes

You would always dress them in baby rays barbecue and charred them green with Kingston’s lighter fluid

Late that spring, you bought a bag of gravel from the quarry of the gorge

In summer your eyes where the color of the snowflake stream

You’ve not seemed to wash the dirt off yet but I don’t mind

You smell faintly of chrysanthemums and a deflated air mattress on sodden earth

It caused the rust to creep into your nail beds but I find it comforting

The day it seared my skin together the windows made our fingers bleed

You bought red roses for her linoleum countertops, the smell always made me vomit

By the end of summer, you had 27 in your backseat.

In Autum your eyes where that of a cumulonimbus cloud

Often you’d collect the tiger moths in plastic cages.

I pitied them, left starved and alone, did you feel the same?

The rust has crawled up to your chest now

It’s beginning to hold your heart, but I don’t mind

You smell of petrichor and thick with fossil fuels

Your skin is beginning to stain black…

you’ve forgotten to wash it off again, haven’t you?

Your nearly done with the gravel path

In winter your eyes where

They didn’t look at me anymore anymore

Out of all this season was the most vivid

By know you had a mountain growing in your backseat, the smell made we want to vomit