White Ink
       

He was the reason for cravats

cuff links and pinkie rings,
wore green Italian leather shoes
and was everything vodka promised
to the right mood.

He was exactly handsome
and blurred our evening rehearsals
with a Portuguese wine
I mispronounced on purpose.

He swelled my dressing room
with Cuban cigar smoke,
a suggestion of cologne
and jokes about his double knotted wife.

He taught me the purpose of curtains,
how to bone a soliloquy till it fit on a cuff,
scratch a quote into my watchstrap with a compass,
and how to write a killer line in white ink

across my wrist.

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Copyright © 2016 Bernadette Cremin All rights reserved
from Papercuts
Salmon Poetry
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission