The Year Of Cherry Red Lipstick

I'm not sure who gave methe tube of Cherry Red Lipstickso perfectly huedthat my lipslooked black and bluea bruise that had never been kissedThe cylinder of waxwas more a purple blue-reda ruby stone encased in tinI wore a slash of it on my lipsfaithfully dailyto period one American Litand mouthed along to Annabel Leewho lived by the seaI wore it ceremoniallyto class where the prom princessstared and whispered evil to her friendsTo theatre where my friends lovedmy bold lip gashTo the library where I hid in the stacksand wrote about Jay Gatsby's worldand the fleur de lis on Milady's armand how Aragon and the other ninewould come and save mefrom my darknessWhere even cherry red lipstickcould not color my pale pure white worldand curve my lips into a sweet angelic smileI wore it the day I metmy first boyfriendborn and raised with the island wealthywhere he learned to speak pristine Englishand laugh at my long voweled accentHe had an unusual appreciationfor Nietzsche and Nabokovand said my cherry red lipsreminded him of LolitaI curved my mouthinto what he thought was pleasurefor being compared to a literary goddessI was almost out of the scarlet waxwhen my Punahou beautook me to a partywhere several Buff and Blu teenssat in a sunken Tantalus living roomdrinking imported beerwatching a strange movieabout a model and her rapistlaughing as they grew drunker and bolderas they saw her tied to a four-post bedcherry red lipstick smearedon her frightened faceI didn't want to watchHemingway's granddaughterbeing violated on screenI left for the bathroomPunahou boy calling me with his Hawaii Kai suaveI locked the door behind meand scrubbed off my lipstickbefore my handsome fox could get any more ideasBut I wore the last of the cherry red tubeof wax and resinas I smiled at graduationthe ending of Lipsticka vivid thought in my headthe scene where the model shot hermake-up loving attackerI smiled with the last sheath of oilfrom my cherry red stickeven as I knew my own invaderwas still alive on the south side of my islandin his hill top homebut I was out of lipstickand no longer caredAbout Annabel Leeor Lolitaor Miladyor the Fellowship of Nineever saving me from my cherry redlipstick stained worldWendie Burbridge is a published writer, playwright, and a teacher of literature and writing. She is a contributing editor at sweatpantsandcoffee.com where she writes the travel column “Off The Rock” and does book reviews for “Hot Cocktail Reads.” She also writes the “Hawaii Five-0” blog “The Five-0 Redux" at the honolulupulse.com for the Honolulu Star-Advertiser. Originally from Hawai'i, she now lives in Birmingham, Alabama.References: Punahou school, Lipstick starring Mariel HemingwayPhoto credit: Me As A Geisha by Frances Ulloa is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.