Spin the Color Wheel: Scarlet

Welcome to a new weekly prompt, in which I spin the imaginary color wheel I keep in the corner of my mind, and choose a color for you to use as a filter for your poetry. Today's color? 
(Whrrrrrrrr-ing!)

SCARLET.

I first encountered scarlet in my crayon box. A classic, to be sure, but it's been around much longer than Crayola. (A quick Wiki-cation revealed as much.) And you know, I found something veeeeeery interesting in my Wikipedia travels. 

In the context of masculinity, scarlet symbolizes power, royalty, and courage. See: military uniforms (a la the traditional British military garb of red coats),  Roman Catholic Cardinals, British nobility & the House of Lords, various flags and national colors (i.e. symbols of power). Sometimes it symbolizes sin, especially when you're leafing through the Bible.

(Note: this is simply a pattern I'm observing. Obviously there are exceptions to every pattern.)

In the context of femininity, it is most often affiliated with sin, sex, and prostitution. See: Red Light District, the Whore of Babylon (that's right, we're getting biblical on you: "[The Bible]...describes the "Great Harlot" (meretricius magnus) dressed in scarlet and purple (circumdata purpura et coccino), and riding upon a scarlet beast (besteam coccineam)), Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter. When I initially Googled "scarlet" and looked at the images it turned up, half of them were naked women looking mighty mischievous or mysterious.  

The good news? Scarlet symbolizes blood and sacrifice pretty much everywhere. So that's a nice,  universal silver (or should I say scarlet?) lining. 

Naturally, my mind boggled at both the double standard, and at how one color can mean such wildly different things in different contexts. When I first drafted this post in my head, I thought my Googling would turn up naturally occurring instances of scarlet -- open and shut. Instead, I find this complex history tied up around the color. The feminist in me cringed. The historian in me scrolled as if in a trance, making mental notes all the while. The aesthete in me reveled in the amount of decadent scarlet filling my vision. 

And the writer in me rejoiced. Ambiguity is our life's blood, after all. 

Without further ado, I present to you: scarlet.

Definition: a brilliant red color with a tinge of orange.

(via Wikipedia, of course.)

Shades: Torch Red, Flame, Fire Brick, Armenian Red, Kermes, Cochineal, Crimson, Cadmium Red (aka the preferred red of Matisse). 

Photo Inspiration: 

Pictured: roses, a lovely woman wearing red lipstick who isn't the Whore of Babylon 2.0, Scarlet Schwalbenschwanz (butterfly), a Blood Moon, a ship with scarlet sails, and scarlet ink in water. 

(I tried to find more neutral photos and let the color speak for itself.)

The Prompt

Write a scarlet poem. Let it be a filter you see the world through, and let the color & its related imagery drive the poem.  Don't be afraid to address its duality. Don't be afraid to hit something (or a symbolic somebody, I suppose) in the feels. Remember courage and sin are equally at stake here. Where's the line? Can scarlet ever be a color of balance? 

In the end, remember: scarlet is blood. It's sacrifice. We may call it power, we may call it sex, we may call it sin -- and perhaps it is all those things as well. But in the end,  scarlet is the color of your blood being given up to the air. 

Read more posts by Alexandria.