Red Study

1. raw meat, and the financiers working on China time, feasting, gravy dripping on cocktail napkins, cranberry cocktail, duck breast and fig jam, chili butter and lobster tails, skirt steak, stolen cattle, astro-rustlers beyond the Martian sunset, ranch brand in the fire, sizzling hairs, a tortoiseshell boar brush, strawberry blonde hairs in the damp of the sink, raspberry pickers in the off-season, the phlebotomy hours, the puncture, the matador’s rippling cape, the bull charge, dichromatic, dogs, Irish setters on parade, the dog park or ladies luncheon, scarlet gowns, AIDS ribbons, cold shrimps, pomegranate peels floating in the bath water,

and then,

2. in the checkout aisle, you place a package of licorice whips in your shopping cart. You remember the cherry taste of childhood, medicinal, feel the ghost of your mother’s hand on your brow, checking for fever. Your college boyfriend bought you candy too. Scottie Dogs. You haven’t spoken in a while, but you press the heart outline under the picture of his family wearing matching plaid pajamas and posing with their real Christmas tree. You awkwardly steer the sticky cart away from the cashier, mumble your sorries to the other Canadian Tire shoppers. In Aisle 76, you pick a tree for yourself: Indoor use only, 250 incandescent ruby lights, Replacement bulbs available, 494 PVC branch tips, Includes plastic stand. This year, you will mail your cards early. You will make cranberry sauce from scratch, and you will not spill Shiraz on your coconut-white angora sweater, like

3. ketchup splattered on Annie’s White Cheddar Macaroni & Cheese / Snow White’s conception / the needle and carmine embroidery floss / poppy fields / first snowfall / the lake house in winter / cardinals on a picket fence / used tampons / raspberry yogurt

4. You have been trying, for some years, to reveal colour with romance, as if the entanglement would reveal a flaw in colour theory, but you cannot find primary colour, only shades of pink, which is, perhaps, a flaw of passion.

Emily Bulicz-Arnelien