By: Rebecca Petchenik
All there is is pink and pink and soft pink and just a little bit of heroin.
Soft pink and pink like your soft pink lips used to be and not the soft pink of the foam around
your feeding tube.
Pink and soft pink and high by the waterfront because the wet hole that said “you could have
called” used to be soft pink lips that said “I love you”
Pink and soft pink and young and foolish and a scar where they put your skull back together after
scooping your soft pink brain back in and just a little bit of whatever $20 will get me.
Pink and pink and soft pink like my heart when I think of ghosts and ghosts and soft pink ghosts
being the least of things with the power to haunt.
Pink and soft pink sun under the tree in the park where your soft pink lips kissed mine on a soft
pink afternoon and soft pink and now just a little bit of rain.
Soft pink and pink and beeping machines and a wheelchair forever and a 1 in 300,100 chance
and “you could have called” and pink and soft pink.
7 floors straight down and soft pink and “if anyone had tried to stop me” and Texas for physical
therapy and loving me pushes people off of buildings and just a little bit of those pills from the
tin under the bed.
Pink and soft pink and just a little too high to walk home but just enough to make the bright sun
soft pink so I won’t notice that it’s a bare root and ground beneath my head and not your soft
pink thigh.
And pink and soft pink and pink and pink and all there is is gentle soft pink and just a little bit of heroin.
Rebecca Petchenik is a queer writer, actor and organizer originally from North Carolina. She currently resides in Portland, Oregon. Her most recent play, KAIT, premiered in Portland as part of the Fertile Ground Festival in 2019 and was produced as part of the OUTwright Theatre Festival. Her work has been featured in The Bridge, the Pointed Circle, and across Portland Stages. She has a forthcoming collection of fiction and does regular short story readings in the PDX area