Ruby Insides

The desert is legended to be barren and cruel but I have sprinted through her mountains at sunset and so I know better. She is cruel, has stained my skin the rough shade of peeling pink. Her cacti, the ones that come alive and dance at night when it is cooler, have sewn shards into my ankles and thighs. When I pull them out crimson spills but it never hurts. The desert drinks my blood like a stranded sailor drinks fresh water. I would gladly give her all of it.

The friend that is a witch crushes raspberries and Himalayan salt and wild grape leaves to made a shade she calls lust. I stain my lips with it before he picks him up. You taste like magic, he tells me. It is so much more intoxicating than being called pretty.

I surf every morning and beg the ocean to drown me in blue but the moment my skin is dry my world is veiled behind the ruined red rage of reality. Regret holds my happiness at ransom. I have nothing left to pay.

Before I began to rip through my coccon I painted it wih my own glittery ruby insides. I could barely move but I bit my lip hard enough for it to drip and then kissed the cage.

When I thought I was finally free, the sky was showing a sailor's worst dream. They deem the ocean's indulgence cruel when she paints her own cage and fills their lungs with red rain; they don't understand that it's not her fault that when she bleeds she can't help but splatter others.

Your cheeks were the same crimson when you gave yourself a sunburn inside. I have always hated library lights.

Target's lights are even worse. My vision turns to dots when the dog winks. It might have been the weed but I blame the twinkling red Christmas lights that had your name printed on the box. It doesn't matter. Either way, the puppy howls and the boy with tattoos turns into a knight and the whole time all I can think is fuck those stupid red Christmas lights.

I could make you giggle like a little girl but could never make you blush. Your face only turned my favorite shade when I decided to carve cherries into other boys' backs. I burnt my tongue eating a spoonful of lava for a reason.

I dye my hair black the same day I paint the wall red. It stains the white walls and drips and dries. I leave it.

When I was dared by the moon to sprint over embers I told her no for the first time in my life and she glowed red with rage in reply. My feet were coated in rufescent ash for days. I was sad when the last of it finally washed down the drain.

Poppies are pretty and so am I but it's good to remember that all flowers die.

I don't miss most things because I only crave change but sometimes I dream about the Autumn days when I sat on top of a train. Leaves fall like wishes and trains wail like forgotten kisses and the whole words turns gory when the trees decide to die. Their funeral is the first real snowfall. You can catch glimpses of the leaf-shaped war wounds peering through. I drink red wine to mourn them.

Tress talk, you know. They're the ones that told me that garnet is more precious than gold. Red is scary because it makes you stop. When you stop you might decide to go a different way. I did. I always do. Didn't you ever wonder why I never took the stone off my neck when I was with you?

When I was little my neighbors boiled lobseters for Christmas and when their beady red eyes and their thin red whiskers and their shiny red claws snapped at me I started to cry. My mom thought I was scared. I just didn't want them to die. They were some of the reddest things alive.

I fall as slowly as plucked rose petals. I don't know how you weren't fast enough to catch me.

Traffic lights have eyes. Sometimes I glare back until I think I might go blind.

I'm going to die on PCH someday turning my head to look at the sunset when I should be steering a metal coffin through cliffs but if the last thing I see is a neon reflection of angel's wings turning a pure white sky cerise I will meet the devil grinning and gasping.

I grew horns when I was three. Could always lie through my teeth. Red suits me.

I roll strawberries in sugar every morning and then suck on them for hours. I am terrified of what would come out of my mouth if it wasn't sealed shut with all that sweetness.

The first boy I loved rode a red horse that came out of a November sea and trampled his father's red body on a red beach. How are you not afraid? Of the horses and the sea and the stopstopstop of that haunting color? Because, my red boy would say, horses are just like the sea. They smell fear too. My father just didn't drench himself in enough perfume.

You wiped the strawberry juice off of my lips. I spoke without a sugared coating for the first time in decades. Radical rare romantic redemption. Romance isn't red, it's pitch black, but I let you turn me rogue for a night anyway. I'll go back to my routine tomorrow.

The red at the top of the rainbow is where my little brother lives and the pot at the bottom is where my older sister sleeps but I'm pretty content in the eye of the storm.

Before they could give me my own scarlet letter I decided to tattoo it onto my third eye myself. The needle wasn't clean. It stung for weeks. I screamed. But I know what I am, and I know where it belongs, and I don't give a flying fuck what they decide to call it.

There is a glowng image of you I see every night before I finally sleep. You were standing in your kitchen in red sweatpants trying to air fry Oreos. When you looked at me and smiled your eyes were glowing like a demon's. You ate too many and asked, permission to throw up please? You were never a graceful thing, always had to fill yourself up with anything so that when you looked at your reflection you could blame the pretty picture on something posionous. But even when you filled yourself with shit whenever you looked at me you filled me with gratitude like a hot air balloon fills with helium and lifted me up, up, up. Sucked all the air out of me, too. If you want to, I'd let you do it again. And again. And again. Even if eventually the balloon pops with me standing inside.

Especially if it pops. Let's paint the Santa Monica moutains with both our intenstines.

When most people think of Hell they think of hot heavy heat but when I think of Hell I think of blue. It must be cold. Anything red is too alive to be that low. Anything buried beneath the ground is too hidden to be that alive.

Anarchy and Achilles and airplays and Afters. After, After, After. After, you're Patroclus. After, depression is Achilles. After, I'm the whole goddamn Trojan War. I wear a shimmering crimson helmet made of acorns and armor made of shredded organs when I ride into battle on my boy's red stallion. I don't know why I thought I'd be even a little bit protected. It's okay, though. Achilles is even hotter with matted crimson hair than smooth gold curls.

I'll kill him once you die but only after I kiss him. I hope you rage enough when my red lips touch his golden ones that I can hear your fists pounding against the ground under our feet. I'll stomp right back in beats of three. I--Miss--You. Always do. Even if I'm far too alive to contemplate any sort of red suicide.

4:44 are angel numbers. When they come across my phone in the dark and a challenger speeds past on the rainbow my brother still waits on I take it as a stop sign. I don't obey the lights with eyes in the morning on my way to be a caffeine dealer but that morning I sit for a whole minute, not daring to even breathe, until the clock goes back in time and turns to 4:43.

I'm standing on top of a tire in a red bikini when you finally see me. If bullshit had a logo it'd be in bold, italicized red, and it would spell out your name.

But the bullshit is what makes life interesting. It is the nose bleeds and the heart bleeds and the pit bull's puncture wounds when he slides his canines into my calf and decides to clench. When they rinsed the wound with saltwater I didn't wince. Instead, I deemed the pit bull my new prince.

Time is red too. We both always only wanted to run fast but now I am thankful for her slow, steady speed. She's the thing that heals me.

You left a bullet wound. But the bullet passed cleanly through. I am finally out of my ruby red coccon.