She flashed her carmine smile at me,
lips spread like two blooming crimson petals,
beauty mark perched in a temptingly kissable spot,
just above her immaculate lip line.  
Her fang tooth flirtatiously turned inward
& made her look as if
always brewing intent to initiate adventure,
certain to be pleasurable but prohibited,
& most surely to provide
ample opportunities to escape trouble
after having taunted it.
This minor imperfection served as a reminder that
her beauty was still human,
or else I'd have believed that
she was the product of a profoundly, elaborate hallucination;
that I had not yet woken from an impeccable dream.
She roused me up from my stupor & seduced me into sojourns
through the city blocks that lined our teeming, little hometown.
We stood out as dreamers
in a land full of people with their heads down
like drones, working for their hive.
She kept me feeling alive,
& questioning the complacency of my surroundings
in a muted, Midwestern mecca
where you are taught to accept what you are told
& swallow down bland traditions & institutions
like cold oatmeal.
She made me wish I was a boy
so I could seize her by the perfect slopes of her
statuesque cheekbones & paint my timid, **** lips
with her carmine smile;
but to play in her paint would be to stain harsh red
across the flawless landscape
of our very intimate understanding
of one another.

& so I long for Carmine.