Pink
first used as a common
name for houseplants
derived from the Greek
with clenched fist and Latin
to fight pierce or prick
associated with petals women rawness
and deflowering which happened
to me when I was nine hospitalized
and needed some kind of test
the young woman called Rosaline
who Romeo loved before he met Juliet
the word’s root is shared with poignant
puncture punch and repugnant
as a child the thing I most wanted
was a canopy over my bed
a dreamy veiled curtain
to pull shut and hide in but
instead ribbons covered the beams
the finest among specimens
as in Romeo’s friend Mercutio who said
nay I am the very pinck of curtesie
in verb form to stab or to make holes in
one night I unstitched
the seams of my dress and I spread
out the pieces of sparkly thin fabric
until my body’s shape seemed
to go away
by 1680 the word was replacing
incarnate as the name for a shade
between pale rosy flesh or blush
and blood or crimson
technically pink isn’t
a color but an illusion
we perceive by mixing the two
light spectrum extremes
I used to love getting wasted at parties
stumbling across the street
and hoping someone would find me
to see pink elephants
means to hallucinate drunkenly
I used to tell manicurists
that I’d fallen rather than admitting
I’d bitten through the skin
on my hands which I did
most days without noticing
when Romeo pleads o teach me
how I should forget to think
and Mercutio replies
prick love for pricking
even now when I drink
I still wake up to find my old cuts
bled all over the sheets
MAG GABBERT holds a PhD in creative writing from Texas Tech University and an MFA from The University of California at Riverside. Her essays and poems have been published in 32 Poems, Stirring, The Rumpus, Thrush, Hobart, Phoebe, Birmingham Poetry Review, and many other journals. Mag teaches creative writing at Southern Methodist University and for Writing Workshops Dallas; she serves as the interviews editor for Underblong Journal. For more information, please visit maggabbert.com.