Violet Mars

 " Violet Mars"

The night was odd, something was amiss 

What was that pantomime strangeness of night?

Ancient China has rung 

I was an unusual lady of books and I swam upstream

I entered through a white door that was make-believe, but I didn't feel at home there

I could not afford this wild lived in place 

The room had no furniture except for a beat up mattress on floor six

On the wall above the second hand mattress was a neon sign that read ,"D-R-E-A-M" that was lit up in large scale Violet lettering on the wall in a low lit apartment downtown  

I could hear the tight throbbing dance rhythms fade out

I felt so alone in my amber brown skin

It was half past 8:00 and I was surrounded by the crackheads mayhem on 1st and the local drunkards hiding behind velvet rope 

I waited in vain for my mockery of an interracial date

He drove a Black 1991 economy car and I a cloying dilettante 

My ethnicity was mixed up like a Death by Chocolate treat and I was, a giggling Black girl they forgot, wide-eyed, and different from his usual blank females and the beauteous skanks he courted  

I was that spacey sistah a black woman with red lips who fancied drop earrings, the kind that carelessly dangled 

It was late July and I could see out of my open window in the miniscule lackluster room as I waited on plastic jerks

I looked down at the electric city below me

It was Friday night still and I was drinking alcohol from Mars and Neptune, but I wasn't drunk 

I stood in this strange room the color of neon violet that matched my aura that was electric

Where was my date?

Why didn't he call?

I looked all around the empty room 

It was 9:00pm

I could barely drink from my bottle as I was a part-Black woman he silenced during World Wars and I was never at all pregnant 

He stood me up as I paid rent on Violet Mars

I was spaced out again now lost in the temples of Malaysia as I watched the ancient dance of the sun 

I was a single Black woman as I lit my filtered cigarette in a Violet room filled with auric colors left behind from the strange, alien space queen of the fairies wrapped in clear aqua blue plastic from the sphere of the Urania galaxy in a distant future that intertwines was now just fancy window dressing for interracial couples commingling 

I then landed on Violet Mars on an old mattress while the essence of strange moons fumigated my cheap rental space

I was now home

I was putting on makeup for crude gentlemen

By Tiffany Haty. 

December 15, 2022