The world is shades
of grays and blues and whites
and the sun stays hidden
inside a snow globe.
And the vibrance of your pet canary
is concealed in a cage,
under a white blanket.

I long for days when sunlight
penetrates the dust
and gleams through the window,
shining on us. I need the gray, blue and white
to transform and become warm.
I want the clouds to dissipate—
scatter into smaller
and smaller
pieces,
until they disappear all together.

Instead, we sit on opposite
sides of your room—
looking through old textbooks
that were sitting on your parent’s shelves
torn and frayed for years
before we were even born.
We want to find some truth in
outdated mathematics and science.
We need something nonfiction to
make sense for once.
The only noise is the turning of pages,
the quiet twittering of the canary
you kept in a cage all winter.

You carry your book
across the room to where I am.
I look up at the still gray window—
“I’ll show you my colorwheel,”
you say. You pull a bright red pen
out of your pocket and crack
the hard plastic covering and then
tear into the tube of ink
and the ink flows down the page
of the old textbook you hold.

The grays and blues and whites
change to a vivid red
and you let the canary fly
from his cage.