When our daughter was in elementary school she loved to go with us to the hardware store so she could collect paint swatch cards. At one point we used her collection to cover a small side table with all her favorite color names collaged under a piece of glass. She imagined her perfect job would be to name colors for a paint company. I always remember the smell of mixing clay, and the particular feeling of color created with each firing..

Blue

when I was young, I wanted to name paint samples.
             varieties of blue like whispering night air, tragic
lake. whites like echoing eggshell,

             memory of light. yellow like nervous blossom,
hay in afternoon sun. purple like shivering mountain
            laurel or green like air after rain.

it’s said light blue
             will keep birds from building—
they believe it’s the sky.

             but how could anyone not want to live in the sky?
even mud daubers
            won’t create their clay pots

on anywhere colored like flight.
             disney paints buildings they want to hide
in bye-bye blue—

             the same color as the eyes
of boys who knew how to love me
if only I blended in

             with their hands. when I was young,
I painted my room blue hydrangea—
             “dare” by the gorillaz played on my indigo radio

& now when the song comes on
            as I’m driving my white car on the dusty backroads,
I remember the smell of paint

             & summer light. my old flame-
point cat lying on the clear paint tarp.

all those places I missed—
             I wouldn’t notice until years later.

—Laura Villareal, in Poetry, March 2023