To whoever’s in charge:

please forgive us these many colors of blood,

these colors of allegiance and sorrow,

obligation and betrayal.


Please remember we cannot tell

which color will render us helpless

against ourselves, our unrecognized legacies

of indifference or rage.


Each midnight renews our possibilities;

brief blood of the dawn,

inevitable blood black beyond dusk,

blood as a dye in the tightly woven clothes


lovers wear in the first few moments

of the dreams we never remember,

the ones farthest from waking.

Please forgive us this day the unnamed red


we will only know on sight,

the one echoing in the center of ourselves,

the blood that we must be

and then must not be us.