BWR

I wore my one red dress to your funeral,

isolated, intangible in an ocean of black and white,

For you were Aphrodite in a glass box,

For I wasted your last Rouge Dior on formalin lips.

The mortician said I could have a future in this business.

On my high school graduation day,

I earned red on my face—pulsing, stinging.

For the cancer casted black as your bête noire,

For I told you black would hide the flatness of your chest.

You threatened to burn all my clothes and ambitions.

Our favourite Japanese painting

Withstood the flood: on a black ink tree branch,

still perched are two black and white cranes

with a splash of red as crowns,

only the middle void, the white space on the white rice paper, now turned beige.

The lack of sense never stops things from happening,

And no matter how loud you screamed at death to stay back, he will have his way with you.

Open and red were your eyes when you died,

White were your tears, and black was where my heart used to beat.

I wore my one red dress to your funeral,

Shamed and ignored in an ocean of holiness,

For it meant disrespect,

For it was not in accordance to the occasion.

When your shrill counsel kept echoing in my veins,

In my throat, in my medication—how could I mourn?

From the black fabric I weave for the rest of my days,

I’ve grown one head and another and some, and never settled on one.

I can just be Johnny’s Lady in Black,

Leaving all other colours for the world,

For I’ll forever be your stubborn little girl.