Scarlet & Sage

          A season you are scarlet, another sage.
          Romance, rebel, remain ribald, risque.
          Your life all ordered chapters. Turn a page.
          Restrain, reserve, resign to put away.

          the garnet gown, the ghost inside your head.
          They tell you that you have to cut your hair.
          The girl who hides inside, except in bed,
          will scream to be herself everywhere.

          A garden’s beauty lives in color, range.
          Blooms begun, undone, die every hue.
          What’s essential must not be made to change.
          Don’t let life take a single thing from you.

          Be blades and stems, tulips every stage.
          Don’t ever let them make you act your age.

Kristin Garth is a kneesock enthusiast, Best of the Net nominee, and sonnet stalker. Her poetry has stalked magazines like Glass, Yes Poetry, FIVE:2:ONE, Anti-Heroin Chic, Former Cactus, OCCULUM, Luna Luna, & many more. She is the author of three chapbooks, including Shakespeare for Sociopaths (The Hedgehog Poetry Press, 2019); her full length, Candy Cigarette (The Hedgehog Poetry Press) is also forthcoming. WEB   COLUMN   TWITTER
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