NaPoWriMo 2022 – Day 6

Late start for me this year! Today’s prompt is to write an acrostic poem, where the first word in each line corresponds to a word from a phrase. Sylvia Plath’s “Lady Lazarus” has been rattling around in my head all day, so I decided to go with ‘And like the cat I have nine times to die’. Not the best of choices, in retrospect…

And here, the bougainvillea are in bloom, a blowsy fuchsia 
like the pink of my mother’s lipstick I wore when we first met. Remember?
The day was unbearable, hot: mint leaves wilting, sandwiches spoiling in the sun, a 
cat with patchy fur and drooping whiskers expiring on the garden wall.
I, alone on the patio, shading my eyes, the lipstick bleeding. 
Have you thought much about those first tentative words? You asked me my age.
Nine, I lied, a wishful and laughable untruth. How many
times since have I lied to you? And you
to me—at that party, I asked you where the cat would go if she were to
die. You whistled. To Arizona.