Woman

Vermillion
is the colour
of devotion.

Cover your head
This thin translucence
will protect you

Laugh softly,
and softly walk
like gentle rain

Pull a smile
across the thin lines
of your face

Wear modest pastels
Never scream,
my grandmother said

mother, barely twelve
with scuffed knees
and trees to climb still
laughed and jounced out
to adopt stray dogs

Forty years gone

Time sprints like
running water
or quicksilver
and disperses what it must

But some things remain.

Don't wear shorts, look down
slouch so your breasts
don't really show
tie your hair back
keep the boys calm

cross your legs -
Be cheerful always
please don't scream

I with scuffed knees at twelve,
dungarees at eighteen
and lovers lost,
reclaimed, discarded
like driftwood
by twenty one

could never listen
with exactitude

I wear red
My eyes are dark
Sometimes, I scream.