WINTER 2019 SECOND PLACE
You like your meat red – not pink – red. There has to be blood, there have to be juices flowing and you have to be able to chew it in that way that you think shows your manly jawline but I think makes you look like a sad old man who has forgotten his dentures. I look at your pink gums and I look at your blue eyes and I look at the green waitress. I look at the orange curled writing on her name badge and I sound out the letters with my red tongue on the back of my yellowing teeth. I look at her deep indigo bra strap teasing out from under her grey and red striped uniform. I look at your sweat-pink hand on the creased beige napkin dotted with drooping violets that mops up the red slobber from your mouth and I wonder if you wipe your mouth that way after you have been between her legs and I feel green bile in my pink throat, not at the thought of you and her. Just at the thought of you. And I think of the rainbow, the one we would have painted, the one we got all the tester pots for but we never got round to painting and I think how grateful I am now that those two blue lines never appeared and that every month the toilet bowl was red.
