Mary Warren Foulk: Pink Sadness
Photo: Joanna C. Valente
RUEFLE’S PINK
—For Mary Ruefle, in response to her Color Poems
Pink sadness is Adam’s rib swathed in an apron, still reeling from the ring of fire. Pink is that beautiful sadness of birth wrapped in pink cotton blankets. Pink sadness is the yawns of newborns, and husbands napping unaware of sour laundry or antique dishes crusting in the sink. It is the sadness of scented vows, yellowed and lost in the back of a dresser drawer, sometimes found on a random Sunday or re-read at milestone cocktail parties. Pink sadness is the snapshot sunsets and sunrises witnessed during daily commutes, and the ticked hours between strong coffee and evening’s last kiss. Pink sadness is soft lips on a child’s sleeping cheek. It is the shadowing memory of mothers and grandmothers, their imperfect models smiling back from mantels. Pink sadness is the daughters they create.
Currently a student in the MFA in Writing program at VCFA, Mary Warren Foulk lives in western Massachusetts with her wife and two children. Her work has appeared in VoiceCatcher, Four and Twenty, Hip Mama, Curve Magazine, and Who’s Your Mama? The Unsung Voices of Women and Mothers (Soft Skull Press) and is forthcoming in (M)othering Anthology (Inanna Publications) and the Arlington Literary Journal (ArLiJo).
