Wild Pinks

a palette of blushes, fragments of womanhood
after Sei Shōnagon

It depends on the man, it depends on the season
what shade of pink you want against your skin:
plum pink, elderberry in deep December,
mauve, wild sea-­rose in August, the pink one
discovers splitting open a watermelon, thrilling
pink of a hummingbird’s throat, cool-­toned
pink of swoon on a subway, light-­shimmer of
girlhood glitter and hula hoops in July, dark
coral of lip-­and-­cheek stains walking home
from the bar alone, pink remembered upon
waking from a dream in winter and you were
much younger then. Sometimes you long for
pinks tinged with violence: blood-­pink of
crushed pomegranate seeds in your palm or the
poison of pokeweed berries deep in the forest
alone.

All the easy girls of August, popping gum and
laughing brashly, leaning against a stone wall
with their blazing yellow bikini tops and gossip
as the Watch Hill carousel spins behind them
and children catch golden rings from flying
horses. Suddenly you feel invisible, a shadow in
a skirt sailing along the sidewalk and yet the
waves keep coming and you remember a line
from Mrs. Dalloway about how “she could not
even get an echo of her old emotion.” The pink
in you begins to feel like elegy like those last
green-­gold pinks of sunset dripping into the
Atlantic.

Beneath April’s peony moon and a redbud tree
in bloom, you walk barefoot into the backyard
of clover and blue violets, cool mud and new
grass. Hair unspooled tonight, like lightning,
you remember the pink of longing, the rainbeaten
peonies, those nights you were like a
feral child running barefoot through wet grass
again.