We do not own these puppets.
Pink like your Rolls Royce limousine, shiny and impeccably trimmed with silver, also buffed to perfection. Pink in the soft-petaled pansies crushed in your cheeks, rising when he turns your way. You wonder if he even sees you the way you've seen into him.
Magenta like the nightclub scene, the lights flashing neon 'Budweiser' bright and gaudy, the strobe lights flickering and casting strange silver gray shadows over your body. Pastel for the child you couldn't leave in the Kodak paper and the stoic press conferences. Pink hair ribbons for Daddy's little girl, pink bubble gum for Mommy's knee-socks pigtails angel, off to school, off to an adventure. A nightmare in cotton candy pink.
Now pink for the punch that swirls around in your cup. A single umbrella floats in the side, ironically capsized. Pink for the wrapping paper on your sixteenth birthday's presents, for the Barbie poufy taffeta skirt and the light blue and pink wallpaper.
Pink like the flowers on the four-tier wedding cake, like the bouquet of rosebuds hurtling through the air towards some unsuspecting unfortunate. Pink like the lace around the teddy bear's neck, the one with the fur falling off the ear and the left eye missing. The one you could never make yourself throw away, no matter how worn the stitching.
Red for the strawberries of summer, the fruit ripe with seeds and juice, squirting onto your fingers. Red for the traffic-stop lipstick of those summer nights spent on the Houston nightclub circuit, sticky and humid. There's red in the perfectly lacquered nails, there's red under the nails. Red for one last fling between tempestuous satin sheets. And the man singing in the background is urging you to put on the red light, but the door is opening, though no one else has a key.
Muted red is the puffiness of his eyes. He can't even choke the words past iron grated lips. The only color for the anger and the darkness, the handprint on your cheek that stings against the wetness of your own tears. The air conditioner of your Motel 6 room hums in the background, pulled into the foreground by the stifling silence.
Red for drawn blood, raked across a smooth cheek, down a broad-shouldered back. Crimson and burgundy intermingle, dancing a sensuous grind down the street avenue, and no one stops to hoot or catcall from their open window down Avenue B. And a river of blood, another kind, that comes from between your legs and gives life where there was none, takes hope where that fleeting emotion had hidden. Until it stops, beaten into a forceful submission for nine months.
Then red, red, red, sharp shooting pain and flaring agony, down your spine and up your sides and in your back and every muscle is screaming, aching, and your mind is swimming in a sea of endless red, floating and submerging rhythmically. Even release comes to the damned.
Purged, in a kind of salvation that comes from no one but yourself and is all the better for it.
Bianca and Ariana
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