Good Morning Blues
As the months wore on it began to fade, the once- sharp contrast between our skins & hair & lips, as we knew it would. Our rubbing together built up less & less of a static charge. The pale apple on the back of her laptop no longer reminded me of anything in particular, & we traded fewer glances over the rims of our cups. For me, the morning paper became a cosy crib to wake up in, gazing through bars of ink at something like a moon- lit yard — colorless, fuzzy with possibilities — as it slowly shrank into the hard day.
I stole the title but not much else from the traditional song. I’m most familiar with Leadbelly’s version, which begins with a spoken line: “Never was a white man had the blues, ’cause, nothing to worry about.” Street musician Arvella Gray performs a more light-hearted “Good Morning Blues” at Chicago’s Maxwell Street Market in this video.