That is my favorite shade of red
how your eyes go when you roll them back,
tilt your head back, a little to the left –
hurting the leather and yolk of a chair abandoned
in the backseat of an alley, right of downtown
numbers impressed into the branches,
must code every time I spread your legs there.

Enough hours to decompose a body bag,
but I was alive the entire time
and you had enough blood in your face to supply
sisters in an orphanage, glittering privately.

We sipped coffee some evenings,
it became black sand slithering up your dress:
I did not add enough cream.

The mugs were left organized in an aisle
to be gathered later, overcrowded in the glovebox
maroon droplets fall onto my toes as I brake –
imagine a mouse having cut himself
and drowned in the miniature pools you left
of my not being good enough for you, but there
it is nearly my favorite color again
stained between my feet so you cannot fade.