Pink Stains

Isabela Cordero

Perhaps I should start by mentioning I tried to dye my world every shade of pink. Perhaps I should make this as clear as possible, tell you I literally tried to do this. Perhaps I stained my days spent with you fuchsia and my nights champagne. It accumulated. A promise, a desire. Until finally, it was everything. I wasn’t ready when hyacinths grew in my tub and (while I stared out the window as the sky blushed) it became a piece of everything I am.

And so, I began my journey in pink — not only the color, but everything — as if falling down a tie-dye pink hole, tumbling like Alice, except I never tried to find my way home.

But why? Why go to such lengths, you might ask? How could every slice of watermelon be a mountain on the treasure map? Every stalk of rhubarb a palm tree on the coastline? Every strawberry wafer wood for our ship? Every Hostess-pink Sno ball a cave to find treasure? I’ll tell you how.

I wanted to paint my nails pink the other day. The shade of strawberry ice cream, the kind you get on a hot summer day. They’re a deep purple now, like mulberries. I never got around to it.

I spend my days painting pale blue skies and yogurt sunsets.

There are only so many hours in the day.

I make jewelry in the morning, when the sun has barely risen. I place rose gold charms on Spiga chains. Attach peach moonstone to stimulate the mind. Pink orthoclase to rejuvenate. Cleanse each jewel in warm water. Scrub with a soft brush. Touch of a feather. Pick accumulations with the fine edge of a toothpick. Polish with a silk cloth. Follow the path of the facets.

I spent yesterday in the garden procrastinating. I was in a flowery mood. I painted myself in a fuschia mist of dahlias. I drowned my body in cotton candy and blue flames. I drank in the volcanic ash and bathed in an angelic glow.

I sat beneath a carambola tree. Legend says, if two people share a starfruit, their destinies are intertwined. I should have offered you a bite of mine.

A butterfly landed on my sleeve. Golden wings fluttered, hummed: a second heartbeat. It reminded me of Papillon, a sliver of Maru-chan’s advice to Ageha-chan:

I am not in this world to live up to your expectations. And you are not in this world to live up to mine. And if by chance we find each other, it’s beautiful. If not, it can’t be helped.

The Gestalt Prayer. The butterfly flew away and blended into flowers. I guess we weren’t meant to be. I wonder if it stole my heart.

If it didn’t, I’m sure you did. You were always a thief. You plundered my oceans and looted my valleys. You stole the sun from my sky. You said you would only borrow my moon, but I never got it back.

You drew crystal clear oceans along my sides and arched wings across my back. You cherished coloring in the lines. The oceans became aquamarine and topaz, the wings opal and pyrite. You lit ruby fires beneath my skin and turned my mind to milky quartz.

I studied witchcraft in the forest once. I let the embers smother my skin. The lakes baptized my soul. The mud caked my fingertips. The air dried my eyes. My spirit entangled with the forest’s.

The sun tried to remind me to go home. It radiated over my body in light rays of Spanish pink and Baker-Miller. The atmosphere changed and scattered molecules and particles in the horizon.

I read a book about Feng Shui. Researched geomancy. Then I rearranged furniture in my apartment. My living room became a bowl of life. I banished my television from my bedroom and allowed the earth to let out a sigh within my space. I repainted my kitchen sun-kissed orange. You never looked twice.

You restored ships. The longest one took five years. You hammered cedar planks. Restrung hemp sails. Gave a nose job to a mermaid. Repainted her tail sage. Her hair daffodil. Her skin pearl. The eyes of the ship. She held the promise of forbidden fruit and lured desperate men like you to the sea.

We went to the park to eat tangerines. We lay on our backs. I ran my fingers through lime green grass, brushing mimi pink smartweeds. You brought pomegranates. I told you I don’t like them. You still asked if I wanted a slice. I tried it. I didn’t like it. It stained my fingertips pink.

I bought a new liquid lipstick. Milkshake. It tastes like sugar, ginger root, chinensis seed oil. I paint it on the rims of water bottles and tips of smoothie straws.

My lips are always tinged queen pink, forever stained. I branded every collar of every shirt you own with my lips.

We went to a restaurant where a large fish tank ran along an entire wall. I only remember the anthias, king demoiselle, and dragonets gliding through coral. Their scales glittered like metal leaf on glass.

I went to a flea market. I bought a glass frame adorned with metal leaf in the shapes of flowering plum trees and trumpet vines. I could feel the rubbery skin. The juice filled my palm and speckled my skin with miniscule spinels. I could hear velvet harmonies coil up to my ears.

I once baked cupcakes for you: I burnt the bottoms till they turned bronze, iced them rose pompadour, sprinkled them with shards of morganite, and placed them in pink cardboard bakery liners. You complained. You said they made your teeth ache. Pink? Really? Disdain evident. I ate the rest for dinner.

I biked out to the forest — the one with the red oaks and never-ending conifers. Needles coated the floor. Cypripedium acaule began to bloom. Pint-sized lungs ready to rupture. Magenta veins over pink lace. I read under a conifer, needles took refuge in my scalp. The spine called out softly and begged me to lean in and hear every secret it wanted to spill onto me. Dye my skin with black ink. Allow the words of the harlequin novel to bleed into my soul. Once the ink dried, I washed away the remnants of what refused to take root in my veins.

I spend too much time watching the sky in the lake.

There must be another dimension in those pink tinted waters. The trees cast black shadows as deep as the galaxy. The pink clouds as powder blush. There must be something beneath those clouds and obsidian masses.

I imagine you’re still with me there.

Spring Issue 2018

Fiction