Red

She stood out because of her haircolor
Dyed one Clairol shade deeper than a fire
Engine. She draped her hair across her feline
Eyes to call attention away from her chrome
Braces, hidden behind her lips
like a slumber party secret of a girl

of sixteen. She first met him as that girl,
with her hair matching the color
of her dented Volvo wagon and her lipstick
stolen from the drugstore named "Brushfire".
He caught her reflection first in the chrome
hubcap of a tire he was changing; something feline

about her made him want to pet her. (She was feline
in the way a woman is when her mind is still a girl.)
As she waited, she traced the car¹s chrome
lining with her finger, smudging the silver color
temporarily blue. He watched her with a fire
in his eyes, mentally consuming her lips.

The first time he kissed her, she felt her lips
devoured and she pounced on him with a feline
intuition right there among the cars. The fire
in her belly was fueled by the hormones of a girl
of sixteen who still believed in living color
and thought herself brighter than polished chrome.

According to his wife, he didn¹t recognize the chrome
fixtures of the gun a year later, nor her lips
pressed into a tight line, no longer colored,
her lipstick kissed away and her feline
back slumped with wear. She was only a girl
who had her car fixed. He knew nothing of the fire

burning in her heart, just the audacity of her fire
engine hair and her eyes grown resiliant as chrome,
through the tricks she learned as a bad girl.
No defense of her, no explanations fell from the lips
of anyone. Throughout the media interrogation, her feline
smile remained painted a deep red, the only color

for girls like her. She fought fire with words from her lips,
and chrome with chrome, and the show outshone her feline
eyes, which belonged to the girl who believed in living color.