Purple

Purple
by Kristin Garth
for Harold (from the abused muses/crayons everywhere)
Hold me so gentle while we play pretend.
Outline a sky with my viscera shaped
into a friend. Unpeel me. Careful. Skin
my skeleton — paper, wound around grape
wax gelatin. Discard my defenses. Pick
me, slick, up between two fingers, a thumb,
my paraffin softening. Candlestick
creating you a sun of innards, plum
pigmented, familiar, despised — released
with ease to tile while closing your eyes. Sleep
on lavender stars — my blood drew each piece
with purpled flesh from fresh thuds while I keep
waiting awakening to your mistake.
Hold me as gentle as if I could break.
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Kristin Garth is a Pushcart, Best of the Net & Rhysling nominated sonnet stalker. Her poetry has stalked magazines like Glass, Yes, Five:2: One, Former Cactus, Occulum & many more. She has six chapbooks including Shakespeare for Sociopaths (Hedgehog Poetry Press), Pink Plastic House (Maverick Duck Press), Puritan U (Rhythm & Bones Press March 2019) and The Legend of the Were Mer (Thirty West Publishing House March 2019). Her full length, Candy Cigarette Womanchild Noir is forthcoming April 2019 (The Hedgehog Poetry Press), and she has a fantasy collaborative full length A Victorian Dollhousing Ceremony forthcoming in June (Rhythm & Bones) and Flutter (TwistiT Press) in January 2020. Follow her on Twitter: (@lolaandjolie), and her website kristingarth.com.