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The Colour Purple

Author: 
Emily Berry

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)