What Do We Think Of

WHAT DO WE THINK OF lately? Happy, and happy things. Like rainbows. Their curved colors and the tendency for bands to get smaller and smaller. Is it red or is it purple, that is always widest –
                                                                                                                I don’t remember now. I could say it has been a long time since I saw a rainbow but that is a lie. In fact it has only been 61 days. And we have already established the dangers of lying, and also inorganic laundry detergents, anti-acne facial soaps, unwashed fruit, hot baths. But this does not matter to the seal:
                                                                                                                                        the seal would rather have her whole cold ocean living
beneath her than one hour in a hot, steaming claw-foot tub. We can see her from this high rock, down there in the water, black-eyed and the surface bluing – I breathed like that once in a deep, cold place, and blinked like that through salt water, and I don’t know if we all surface or if we never really do or if it happened for me in sleeping only –

First you loved me because you thought I was a seal, too. I loved you first for knowing it. I know if I tried hard enough I could fool them all, not just the ones closest my heart.

Megan Leonard lives and works in New Hampshire. You can find more of her poetry in Sun’s Skeleton, Poems by Sunday, Glitterpony, Puerto del Sol and The Bellevue Literary Review.