Carmine, that’s what you left behind.  
That word is all that’s left in my memory.
It was the color of your dress.
Like that, the second layer of my drink.
The horizon, hurtful, far and stained.
That was the color filtrating through the curtains.
The trails of my fingers on your skin.
The color that I blurred from your lips.
 
That was the color that faded from your toes when you descended, for the first time, from my bed.
The color of your ribbons in the summer air, dancing to the wind in one of our runaways.
And when I opened the door to our room, that’s how my hopes, pulsating, looked.
That was the color of my breath when I saw you with another in the bed.
Carmine, the aspect of my wound after I broke the vase.
 
It was the color of your pulse in stupor,
The phylum of my voice,
The breaking of the future,
The vanishing of the noise,
The force of my muscle,
And the edge of the glass,
bathed in a red puzzle.
 
Like that, the realization draining in the sink.
The tremor when I opened the door one more time.
The color of when I began to run in the dark,
And the color of never going back.
 
Carmine, that word is all that is left of you.
Of course, besides the fading guilt.