Amnesty

Painted Delilah's, scarlet sirens, apples and bloodshed- You tried to teach me to fear the bold obscenities of Red, to be a willing captive within conventions of virtue and the expectations that came with my gender and station. I learned to speak softly, in shades of anemic pink but my tongue was never far from hemorrhaging. I resisted the riots building within, but with each aspiration I found myself closer to the consequences of containing fire; the blisters in the wake of passions, the residual footprints left on the tip of my tongue by the spirit of my own fire. I'm not a red woman. I’ve never gone looking for Red, it came to me from somewhere inside and I swallowed it, afraid that it would blossom in my mouth, uncurling one petal of fire after another until some great demon-flower crawled from between my lips to seduce my fate with a brimstone damped tongue. I couldn't choke on my voice forever, so it has manifested itself through my hands, through my poetry. My fire has found amnesty and burns silently so that you do not have to hear what I need to say. My words may be stained red but they have not slaughtered any lambs or stirred an apocalyptic sequence of events. I cannot live without breathing, even if I would like to aid your comfort… and so, I breathe through my fingers so you might enjoy the silence and company of your own red-blind convictions.