Red

I bite my lip and pick at the skin and it drips red. Red like the strawberries that haunted her breath. Red like the anger pulsating through the engorged vein on her neck. Red as the sunset the night that he first told me he loved me. Redder still, my cheeks as I write. Sweating and thinking about reds past.

The love I give to you is red. Red and fiery and passionate and intense and deep. The Red sea flows from my heart to yours. Your love is cold, blue, submerging. My red sizzles when our loves meet. I feel like lava dripping off a cliff and into the sea. Cascading out of my lips, falling out of my mouth and onto your salty surface. And then I am extinguished.

Nobody seems to like the redness in my cheeks or the passion that my body exudes. Growing up, I knew that other people could be much more casual. Much more yellow and happy and carefree. Dandelion girls with a self-confidence that had been instilled in them from birth. My red was something to hide. It was the same red that my mother screamed out, cursing the world and the body she inhabits. Looking in the mirror, I always hated what I saw. When I opened my mouth, red burst from it, no matter how hard I tried to suck it in.

I keep telling people my favorite color is green. It wasn’t always. But I would never choose red. I wished so badly that I was pink. Red’s softer cousin, the one who sweetly sings her confessions of love instead of yelling. Pink was innocent and girly. But pink had its own issues.

“Somebody someday will love all of it.”

“Play hard to get. Men don’t like when you’re forward”

“It could be worse”

“If you can’t love yourself, how could you love someone else?”

“Calm down”

Red are my wrists and my throat and the handprint on my ass. Red are the stomach aches and cold sores and freshly picked scabs. Red are my insides and sometimes my outsides match. Red is my mind and the lenses of my glasses.

“Somebody someday will love all of it.”

I hope it’s me.