RED
Maggie Nelson has blue, I have red. Red in the form of the number four, red in blind rage, red as in mean reds the kind Holly Golightly doesn't take lightly ‘cause going to girlie clubs to get out of the doldrums is a hard flex, and red as in the color of her lips before they slipped into a shade preferred by an award winning poet who is known by my local bookstore clerk for writing about their trans partner.
STAINS
On a coffee cup. On a cigarette. On your cheek. On your collar. On your tooth. On your mattress. On a tampon. On the edge of a razor used to perform a mild operation to ensure the hangnail doesn't grow back.
MORMOR
You have lipstick on your zipper is the joke my grandmother cracks when she meets a new partner of mine. Red as in the flushing of capillaries to the surface.
Blush response.
NAME
Sofia is the name that I hear you say when the femme in me reclaims her body through her voice, Red is what you call me when fucking over flows into bubbles of laughter.
TRUCK
Five hundred dollars and a bed full of art. Driven cross country to die in a field in Vermont. Sold and towed away without a proper goodbye. Thank you for keeping the pine shavings for the chicken bedding dry.
CURTAINS
Do they match the drapes?
HAIR
I was born a redhead, but I wished that I had black hair or dark brown at the very least so that I could look like half of my family. “Oh honey your hair is so beautiful and unusual”- said every client in mom’s salon. At 14 I dyed it black with henna, it cast a green glow and I glowed and at Easter my uncle declared I was to never do it again. I did it, again, and again, and again. Brown like the color of my ancestors, Black like the teen goth who powdered their skin to cover the olive cast of health, deep rich over tones to dull the penetrating gaze.
MAGGIE
Bury me in my red underwear. Make my lips as red as they were in life. Paint my cardboard casket red and burn me. Wear red and pop champagne. I want to see a sea of crimson love from the wings.
MHW
There is a favorite red tone that makes us sing. It is not found in the U.S. It is electric. A string connecting a quadrant of our hearts. A queer red. A platonic devotional tone of wordless hue.
SONG
Write me a song that is the color red. Make it a circle of shades. A bass note that has a vibrational sillage to make me weak in the knees when I think of it. When it drops I will pray to a red deity. Let this sound be proxy for three words.