red

I am stood in a shallow wash of sick, sugary, semi-translucent red; the world's smallest man-made lake: plastic/glass-encased. Running red over my callused toes and hive-enraged ankles.

There are parts of me plastered all around the soap scum stained walls (plastic): Melting onto Courtney's all-natural facewash (bought on my advice), creeping over Paula's razor, my razor, my soap (the soap-scum culprit). Red ripping down my back, having birthed at my forehead and nape. Someone added food colouring to the cocktail; it's a little to thin to be real. Traffic-light mocktail. Has the red settled or sunk?

Pulled from between me, still more red. Pooled from me, out of me and in me. Real red now, the kind that took so long to be trained into tame, to regular -- and today, at once, that regularity culled. There's no use for it sitting in my body.

There are no seasons within me, so why should I fall to the acronym which takes it's onomatopoeic name almost maliciously? What right have they? Those spiteful three letters "S.A.D." naming me seasoned. I am seasoned.

The parts of me ran out of me and off me are lapping out the rubber seals. A bold and natural quest for venture out the shower door. But no walking for the legless. Chemical within chemical-induced discard. I can "rinse til clear" but my insides will keep overturning that sugar-spelt velvet floss. The maternal roots of me gripping, never trusting since birth. The faults of me insipidly inherent -- determined before womanhood though only apparent at.

The wigs of my youth have called for other disguise. I put on and shed; manufacture and shed; wear, cry, loathe, love my favourite colour.

I am red. She is read. Wear'd to red; From Red to Led. Led by unleading, unwilling organs. Those twins who refuse to produce twins. I am red. She is red.

All these truths we have been fed not by others but by the knowledge of unfortunate, unavoidable, unignorable self-navigation that 12 year olds all over the globe know. That waking to find one's hair colour does not fit, so it has crawled into the sheets.