COLORBLIND

It’s certainly survivable—
the world a little greener

or redder than perceived,
an inability to distinguish

violet from fuschia—not
even noticeable until your

wife holds up two pairs of
socks, asks you to choose.

Childhood didn’t destroy
you either—mother just

wasn’t a coddler, always
rushing somewhere more

important. No one dies of
being picked up last from

aftercare. Still, you crawl—
enthralled by those who like

a footrest—until helped to
your feet, pins and needles.

Your therapist says, most
people know what they feel

and say what they mean.
So you’ll try, when your

wife holds out her hands,
to tell her what you see.

EQUINOX

Summer, picked clean on its

platter, is taken away. And

we’re never excited about

more acorn squash, garden

smelling of rot, thin light.

For now, you watch me by

the blaze behind the blinds

as you take off everything

but your dark stockings. If

the coming dark was this

warm, I’d follow you all

the way in, kneel to string

lights up yet another year.

---

Luiza Flynn-Goodlett she/her) is the author of Mud in Our Mouths (Northwestern University Press, 2025) and Look Alive (Cowles Poetry Book Prize, Southeast Missouri State University Press, 2021), along with numerous chapbooks, most recently Lossland (forthcoming from Black Lawrence Press). Her poetry can be found in Ninth Letter, swamp pink, Poetry Northwest, and elsewhere. She serves as a poetry editor for the Whiting Award–winning LGBTQIA2S+ literary journal and press Foglifter. She was raised in the wilds of Tennessee and now lives in the SF Bay Area with her wife and rescue dog.