THE COLOR OF MY EYES

By: Julie Benesh

Freezing today, and I’m a little numb

looking out the window at billows of steam

that keep my body warm, but not so much the rest.

I have a to-do list but it’s not written down

and I’m not the type to write things down

just for the satisfaction of crossing

them off. I’d rather make a not-do list,

but hoo-boy, that’d take a while.

Some say winter is not, contrary to popular belief

the season of repose; that under the snow

is a gathering, even an orgy.

I see portents everywhere these days:

that CLOSE TOMORROW sign on the bank

promising a more intimate future

or at least a gesture toward solvency.

My dreams combine times and places,

even people, of my past like a film

poorly adapted from a dog-eared novel,

leading me to believe what I thought was a window

might be a painting, or, more likely, a foggy mirror.

I mean to say I’m a part of nature,

so nothing if not eternally hopeful.

After Tony Hoagland’s “A Color of the Sky”

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Julie Benesh is author of About Time, a chapbook published by Cathexis Northwest Press. She is a graduate of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College and was awarded an Illinois Arts Council Grant. Her work has appeared in Tin House, Crab Orchard Review, Florida Review, Another Chicago Magazine, and elsewhere. She lives in Chicago and teaches at the Newberry Library. Read more at juliebenesh.com.