Gable sits
In black and white
Admiring the alternatives
He sips a drink
He poured himself
And waits for the phone to ring
The plane went down
Several hours ago
He’s at a hotel
Waiting for news
From the mountain
He chews on ice
And imagines debris
Lodged in snow
Buried in rock
Like fossils
From a thousand years ago
Gable runs a finger down his cheek
And blue appears
But not from crying
It’s grief manifesting
But it’s just a mark of it
Nothing more
Nothing significant
Not while the world still plays
In black and white
He gave her a ring
His wife
In fact, he gave her lots of things
Gifts, roses, and other rings
But this ring
The ring she had on
Will be what they find
It’ll be how they know
That she was lost
On the mountain
Along with everybody else onboard
And the phone will ring
And Gable will receive the news
From another famous friend
And his life will take that perilous step
Across the line that separates
Us from them
Loss can take a man
Who had everything
And put him in front of a mountain
Daring him to climb it
Knowing that his wife
Has been claimed
By something more solid on this earth
That any reel of film
He knew why she was on that plane
Everyone knew
He cheated with a twenty-one year old bombshell
With the last name Turner
And the last words he gave to his wife
Were comprised of an explanation
About how lucky she was
To have him
After more phone calls
Than any man had made in history
To a lost woman
In the hopes
Of winning her back
His wife--
Whose name we won’t mention here
Because she isn’t black and white
She is and always was
In color
And you can find her for yourself
If you’re so inclined
--His wife insisted on a flight back to him
So she could save their marriage
And arrange an ending
In black and white
Years later
Parts of her
Will still be up there
On that mountain
Long after Gable has served his country
In honor of her
And even though he marries two more times
To women who look just like the wife he lost
He’ll be laid to rest
Next to her
For him, sitting in that hotel room
Next to a room
Ice melting in the glass
And through his teeth
He believes that the failure
Was his inability
To stay true to her
But the truth is trickier than that
The truth is she was color
And he was black and white
Right up until her plane
Went through a clear sky
And into a wall of rock
The ring they found
Shimmered in the dark
It cut through the black and white
And so a phone rings
And a man dies
And a woman lives
The color washes out
The messy bits
Of loss and fame
But Gable can’t do more
Than fail to find more blue
In a life that’s faded
From light
To dark
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