Deep Red FIONA MOORE

Fiona Moore Deep red

A STUDENT female nineteen tall & thin wearing jeans & scruffy jersey under a long black oilskin mac bought in the Mallaig fishermen's co-op her head full of wine dark seas has got off her bike to look through

the student who wants the dress in the almost abstract way that before she’s only longed for love or fame or adventure all now reduced to this

she wishes she’d dared to go in try it on see how it looked on her oh unworthy of such beauty she’d fail the dress & not right to long for something so expensive what clichés was she enacting just by looking at it

she still wants to hell with the stereotypes of this wish A WINDOW one large clear pane lit very bright in winter dusk & only one thing displayed

window immaculate barrier to entry showing the price £85 as far to the sun from this street where A DRESS deep dark deep red strung up by invisible cords & tilted at an angle as if launched into orbit long full skirt of crinkled silk fanned out in a triangular sweep bodice plain & tight with narrow shoulder straps oh more art than dress if even in two dimensions it takes flight how would it in three worn by

the dress continues to glow each time she cycles past to & from lectures etc until one day it’s not there & isn’t ever until decades later passing

in the window that now fronts

imagining the dress still hanging in some other shop in someone’s wardrobe the medieval street out of which the skirt billows where she stands in the draught when the door’s opened colour of half-dried blood deepest red beautiful stain of all inwardness that