brown

I thought they were blue. She was sorting and stacking a pile of books on a squeaky cart, piled so high you'd of thought if she'd just take one old book down it would change the orbit of the spinning earth, hurling all mankind screaming, just like the unmovable tonnage of those old bug-infested boxes of National Geographics in the damp cellar. Moving out of a slow day of Summer into the archaic bookstore with waxed wood floors, sporting a window pyramid display promoting a dusty pastel display of Willow Beyond The Pampas Grass, she turned to me a few moments beyond the door chime, elbowing the stack of a million words silently crashing to the floor. She let out a blue sigh like it'd happened before. We were down on our knees, sorting the wayward children into balanced stacks, and breathing evenly as we came face to face, I kissed her. And then we kissed each other. Before I could say anything in the awkward silence written all over me afterwards, she unblinkingly told me, yes, her soft reflected pearls were blue in days when she used to be kissed quite a bit.