The Opposite of Friend

What is the opposite of friend?
A dangling question;
Drowning fishes;
The Arizona Desert.
Unexpected silence.

Growing up in my family
Was much like hiding.

When I was little,
I owned a microscope set.

As it turns out,
I am all-seeing but not all-knowing.

When I close my eyes,
I hear a song:

‘Cause there’s a Continental Trailways leaving local bus tonight, good evening
You can have my seat, I’m sticking round here for a while
Get me a room at the Squire, the filling station’s hiring,
And I can eat here every night, what the hell have I got to lose?
Got a crazy sensation, go or stay? now I gotta choose,
And I’ll accept your invitation to the blues

I am not interested in geography;
What I want to know is,
When?

What is the definition of friend?

Return.

The sunrise was a messy spill.
I hadn’t cried for you
Until I saw the colors
Running across the sky:
Red Gold Orange

If I were a tumor,
Looking for a home in you,
Searching for the most
Interesting neighborhoods,
I would move into your brain, too.

You wrote me once, long ago
That your eyes were saffron and
Your hair the colors of
The sunrise.

And that morning I saw you.
The sky bled
All of those colors.
I broke.

I reread your letters
As I drove, staring at
The gold spilling
Into rivers,

Bouncing off the roads and
Gleaming from flooded
Fields and wetlands.

I turned up the stereo
To mix the clanging
Dissonance of the sunrise
With white stripes, pixies and
And drum beats.

Your tidily written words
Smashed up against the
Panes of my eyes.
“I carry you in my pocket.”

It was raining inside my car:
Raining colors.
I turned up my palm
To catch your light
Like a firefly.

But the colors bled and they
Spread and they stained the
Sky, road, water,
My palm and
My eyes:
Saffron.