When You Leave

This sadness could only be a color
if we call it momoiro, Japanese

for peach-color, as in the first story
Mother told us: It is the color of the hero’s skin

when the barren woman discovered him
inside a peach floating down the river.

And of the banner and gloves she sewed
when he left her to battle the horsemen, then found himself

torn, like the fruit off a tree. Even when he met a monkey
dog and bird he could not release

the color he saw when he closed his eyes.
In his boat
the lap of the waves against the hold

was too intimate as he leaned back to sleep.
He wanted
to leave all thoughts of peach behind him –

the fruit that brought him to her
and she, the one who opened the color forever.