The Color of Her Kindness

I pulled the sheets out of Natalia's dryer
and they were blue.
I stopped.
I stared down at them.

Had they always been blue?
Were these my sheets?
Had they been blue the whole time?
I asked her, was shocked:
the sheets were mine.

And suddenly I felt lost at sea.
Had I known that they were blue?
Had I ever really looked at them
or recognized their blueness?

I tried to think back,
to imagine the room and the sheets in it.
If I had been made to guess their color,
what color would I have said?

I stared down at them
and they seemed to stare back,
to swallow me up
along with the man I thought I was.

I was numb, had been numb
to kind and simple gestures.
The sheets were blue
and if I couldn't even pay enough attention
to know that they were blue
and not red, or green, or polka-dotted,
then how could I really know her at all
or see the color of her kindness?

I stared down at them,
at the sheets in my hand,
watching the subtle pleats
overflowing my fingers and
bending towards the earth,
thinking I was a fake
or maybe just a lousy guy.

And there I was,
standing,
staring,
thinking that these sheets I'd touched for days
I'd never really known.

Thinking,
in wonder,
that the sheets were blue.