Pink Prose | Emily Dillon

A man enters the coffeeshop and I wonder: does he wear any pink, unseen? A pink flush barrette bounces before him, gripping like the hands of a baby girl on hair, fleshy fingers roly-poly among baubles and stiff braids. In front of the peach sugar packets, a two-stepping unicorn—can you see it? It’s the color of sugar and fuchsia; it’s the pink of white skin under yellow light; it’s pink, the color of tea levitating in the pitcher. 

I try to ignore it. 

But next to me, post-it notes slip thin like tongues from TEACHER EDITION: Module 4, pink as pedantry, and a baby pink felt pen underlines. I didn’t see it before but there it is: pink on iced coffee straws (or are they white? no matter my eyes see it now) also the pink of the skin on the back of my thumb. Is there, after all, pink in the lines of this prose, woven into the stitch of its fabric? Suddenly

fuck

everything is pink—all the orange pink and brown pink and for sure maroon pink—and I can’t unsee it. My closed eyes color pink and I claw at them, pink nails pulling at long pink scars, hoping for red but exposing only the basil smell of pink, clean pink, that warm soap of pink, and hearing the coined giggle of pink 

and oh my Lord if I have a daughter 

perhaps I will strangle her, classy and prim-like, clutching my diamonds, probably in the tub like all those other mothers, the ones who put their children under water, running out their cheeks until they went pink, until their skin was pink with warm water, until the blood flushed to pink then purple-pink and looking down at hands, pink with effort and resistance, start a new bath, add salts of eucalyptus, lay back to murderous solitude— 

or maybe I will love her 

so much so that my skin will burst into pink bubbles of champagne, reaching towards the surface so swiftly my pink lungs explode, saturated with daughter. 

Emily Dillon is a writer and educator from the Piedmont Plateau of Maryland, between Washington D.C. and Baltimore. She seeks honest representations of lived experiences in her work, which ranges from nonfiction to poetry and all the lyrical places in-between. She is currently an assistant editor for Brevity. Read more at www.emilydillonwriting.com.