made of red
I.
to mom, who seems to think all women should act the same way
do you think i am still a child,
and that i do not know
the colour red,
mom,
because i wear it as lace on my skin
and it covers the thin fingers
that grab my waist,
so that i must think of red
something beautiful?
did you know
that red fills my iris to the halfway mark,
like ink
so when my head tips over
it follows in motion,
and sometimes
it’ll leak out to the sclera
and my world will be painted with colour
like streaks of condensation
when i blow into the glass window-panel
and it’s cold out.
sometimes the red
comes up the wrong way,
and when i smile
you can see it on my teeth,
and when i swallow
it doesn’t wash away.
no matter how many times i dab at the corners of my mouth
and in the cracks of my lips
with my handkerchief,
it’s still there
and my words come out in red print instead of black
so i try not to speak too much.
are you scared of me
and my red,
mom?
do you call me
and all my infinities
'a pity',
'a mess'?
do you wish for me something better,
and apologise for who i am?
do you know
just how beautiful
my screaming, sinful
red
truly is?
II.
to the person that i will one day hand my heart to, even if they don’t want it.
do you see me,
over there? i wear the veins
of my family upon my skin,
and in the grooves of my back
there are stories
like that of which you’ve never seen before,
we won't talk
very much
and in the end you'll walk away,
having forgotten
my name.
and when
you leave
you’ll want to look back,
to blink at me
cause you’ve never been good at remembering people’s faces,
but for some reason
you remember mine.
take the silhouette of me
against your eyelids,
red
against
red space
so you can’t really see me
but can only recall what you think you saw
instead.
watch me wave my hands
like i own the sky,
and smile
like i’ve never been hurt.
take my heart,
and bleed it dry,
then hang it up
on the clothesline.
but be sure to take care,
for if you rub too hard,
the red comes off
and you’ll find it's just some plastic toy
that i coloured as a child with my whiteboard marker.
don’t be too disappointed,
when it’s no fun to play with, after a while,
and you disregard me-
like all the other people
that have ever dared to look back
at something they left behind.
’cause i know too well
that red hurts your eyes.