What do you know about the color red?

1.

She only left us a doodle on the bathroom mirror and that was it.

One cigarette. Two cigarettes. She was dead.

Her body glistened like a blood drop crying. Fields of red wet over her skin. When water slid over, we found that it was oil paint along with blood. She had doused herself in red. Naked red. I am the real story, she said. Her dark nipples peeped through the paint and sometimes her eyes, rolling like that demented shark from The Deep Blue Sea. Mirrors cracked on the floor and flew into her ankles.

She couldn’t ever see herself. She wanted to.

We think that she danced before she did it. Mirrors skittered under toes. A dancing red painted body and smoke shining in a cold, cold bathroom. Then the taps took over and her tub waved like the Indian Ocean. She sang at the first dip, feeling the numbness of her finger tips. We wanted to scream along with her but she didn’t give us any time.
A restless red fish flapped her feet. Red spilled out like the red from kumkum. The red her mother wore or the red from a scissor-ed heart.

What else do we know about red?

She died.

2.

If you remember, we were talking about red. It has such a long history that we can't write about it but red is also the color of love. Hallmark sells cards about it and people gift each other teddy bears. She was made of love and she was still short of it.

Her skin constantly muttered 'let me be touched, let this be loved'. She would hide under sheets and a tightly cuffed suit. She didn't want to be needy but then night curled over, brought the fragrance of incandescent skins. She glowed on beds like a goddess and rhinestones rolled over her groin and she thought, she had finally made it. She heaved on top of mountains. Inhale. Pull the curtains. Be inside me, tell me you are mine. Inhale. Break the pendant, just tell me I am yours. Exhale.

Night chewed up on dreams to spit a fucking sun. She no longer glowed.

Just a sickly piece of coal.