Fifty Shades of Pink

Written for dVerse Poets Pub where
our host, Lillian, invites us to “Get Out
Your Crayons and Color with Me!”

There is the pink of a newborn’s ear,
curled like a secret, a tentative tear,
and the angry pink scar of something broken,
the words that should’ve been left unspoken.

There is bubblegum pink, shameless and loud,
snapping its joy in the face of the crowd,
and the blush that betrays what the tongue won’t confess…
the heart’s little leak through the skin’s address.

There is the pink of flamingos, absurd and sublime,
standing in water like a bad pun in a rhyme,
and the pink of the sky when the day loses nerve
and bleeds into evening along the world’s curve.

There is hot pink …. lipstick, a stiletto, a dare ….
the color of women who don’t stop to care
what you think of their brightness, their volume, their fire.
Pink has a temper. Pink has desire.

There is the pink of a peony, heavy with rain,
and the pink of a tongue tasting sweetness or pain,
and the company pink slip, which is not pink at all ….
just the pale ghost of color before the big fall.

There is dusty rose, which is pink in a fog,
and salmon, which can’t quite commit to a blog,
and fuchsia, which is pink after two glasses of wine,
convinced it’s a purple, and doing just fine.

And then …. if we’re bold …. there is off-color pink,
the kind that makes proper society blink ….
the pink of a joke told just left of polite,
too rosy for daytime, too knowing for night.

Pink is a spectrum. Pink doesn’t behave.
Pink is the crayon both bashful and brave,
worn to a nub from the pressure of use,
still leaving its mark, still refusing a truce.

This is “Pink” by Aerosmith