Vermillion

By  Amanda DeVenuta

Vermillion l

The breath you breathe

Magnetic like water just before it's frozen

Sucked in sharply to its mirrored prison.

Cinnabar dust threading your eyes closed, the sandalwood sexiness of your shadows shape.

Mingled our bodies orchestrate the richest tones, heavy with the weight of our ciphers.

Although something is feeding them; someone has known them all along.

Vermillion ll

Swallowing those secrets that were so long rusted, metal smoldered..

Redness everywhere tantalizing every pulse, cultivating the escape through your veins.

You've been consumed and its the sweetest sin you dispense;

your cloud of breathlessness after you've left a room, an alluring danger.

Vermillion lll

Enrobed in this alive crimson

Ancient stories decorate every inch with blood wood.

These henna antiquities have a language of their own.

Against my skin they melt to the rhythm of phosphorescence, painting a  varnished hue of remembrance.

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