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I know I hate the colour purple. I’ve come to
hate what I know. I know purple was the colour
of the bruise that rose where you slapped my
face on New Year’s Eve. People saw and you
blushed purple. Just joking, you said. I know,
I said. In the scored lines of my hands, in my
closed fists, I know the colour purple. The wine
I threw at you during our last fight. Purple
in the strange lights of your eyes. I know
purple is the colour of the tongue’s underside;
what you see when you pull back a foreskin.
Tantrums are purple, and sometimes dreams.
Purple the colour the heart would burst for,
but is ashamed to let in. Purple the back of the
throat, the raw flesh of a scream. It’s what swells
but can’t escape, this colour I know I hate.
From The Rialto No 65 (Summer 2008)