Red Ghazal

I’ve noticed after a few sips of tea, the tip of her tongue, thin and red with heat, quickens when she describes her cuts and bruises—deep violets and red. The little girl I baby-sit, hair orange and wild, sits splayed and upside down on a couch, insists her giant book of dinosaurs is the only one she’ll ever read. The night before I left him, I could not sleep, my eyes fixed on the freckles of his shoulder, the glow of the clock, my chest heavy with dread. Scientists say they’ll force a rabbit to a bird, a jellyfish with a snake, even though the pairs clearly do not mix. Some things are not meant to be bred. I almost forgot the weight of a man sitting beside me in bed sheets crumpled around our waists, both of us with magazines, laughing at the thing he just read. He was so charming—pointed out planets, ghost galaxies, an ellipsis of ants on the wall. And when he kissed me goodnight, my neck reddened. I’m terrible at cards. Friends huddle in for Euchre, Hearts—beg me to play with them. When it’s obvious I can clearly win with a black card, I select a red. I throw away my half-finished letters to him in my tiny pink wastebasket, but my aim is no good. The floor is scattered with fire hazards, declarations unread.