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 ,"Follow Your Dreams" 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 a crude gentleman

By Tiffany Haty. 

December 15, 2022