Pink is a Color

by Regina Dilgen

Image credit: Pablo Guerrero on Unsplash

For old ladies

That’s what the creative writing professor told us

As we were dutifully

workshopping a draft

to find the right image

This one rejected, discarded

I glanced down, relieved that I was not wearing a pink top in class that day

And that it wasn’t my poem

We never questioned then

That the writer had to be in the mold of Hemingway

All bluster and noise

Living hard and free like Hunter S. Thompson

Strength and power the only currency

Muted tones and compassion signs of weakness

Pink was a color for old ladies

You wouldn’t want any of that in your poems

You wouldn’t want to be that

There was no value

in an old lady

I was a freshman

And could never have told him, not then,

Didn’t know how to think

That pink is the color

Of the inside of a shell

Of tender arousal

Of a favorite piece of hard candy

Of blossoms trumpeting 

Of the favorite sweater in the closet of an old lady

Made by her own mother to last, in their favorite hue of fuchsia

Or to tell him

Back then

that who you call

An old lady

is not one

for you

to disdain

And I should know, now.

***

Regina Dilgen, Ph.D.

Regina Dilgen, Ph.D., served as Professor of English and Department Chair at Palm Beach State College in Lake Worth, Florida. Her poetry has been published or is forthcoming in, Chameleon Chimera: An Anthology of Florida Poets, Blueline, Earth’s Daughters, Quartler(ly), The Dewdrop, Persimmon Tree, Passager, and Apollo’s Lute. She was a featured poet at a Performance Poets of the Palm Beaches reading. She lives in Delray Beach, Florida, where she writes and paints.