No one told you grief would affect you like this

You crave pistachio ice cream

like a pregnant woman,

your hands in the freezer

rummaging

aching for green.

You think back to that ice cream parlour

by Lake Garda –  Riva was it? –

a rainbow of gelato under glass.

 

You remember the choice,

darting right and left,

a promise to go back

until you had both savoured

everything.

Another promise

broken.

You hadn’t even finished the top row

before it was time to come home,

stuck in grapefruit and lemon,

in coffee and raspberry cream.

 

No pistachio.

 

You want pale green lips,

you want fresh and cold and crunch of nut

but all the freezer yields up

is the most mundane

so you eat vanilla anyway – all of it –

and when you bring it back up, ten,

fifteen minutes later,

(the way you bring

everything back these days,)

you are relieved it is not green

because you remember then –

how could you have forgotten? –

that it was on the Italian holiday

scanning an iced rainbow of hard-to-choose

when she told you her favourite colour

was pistachio green.