Purple
You were a mouth made from mayflowers
that couldn’t speak a lick of sweetness
if you downed it like a glass of your favorite Prosecco;
but surprise, surprise,
pigweed was your natal tongue,
and I knew it too.
I knew it well.
Your salvia was soaked in it,
and as was I, secreting it and you.
Bellringer with two fingers
in my chapel as the boysenberry heat
of 8PM collapsed against the bay windows,
inlaying us in a sultry temperament,
betraying our wails to the lofts
tangled up in telephone lines.
My screams were purple too.
And such were the marks
you left tattooed on my neck that had bronzed
by the time I knew of your knells for the wet strangers
working Lexington Avenue.
A modern-day travesty was the heart that
preferred greenback love over that in which
it sanctified but later rued,
or sporting your halo like a cheap Rolex
after pawning off the real one to
a bikini-waxed succubus
clad in my pearls
and you in her lipstick.