purple

The whole room smells of purple. That's the only way I can describe it. You would have understood what I mean. You would have made a crack about it, something to do with The Color Purple and bad Spielberg films. All Spielberg films are bad, you insisted, but I always made you give the man Indiana Jones. He gave us that, you gave me more.

I sometimes imagine this room, so maybe I'm not walking in it right now. Maybe I'm dreaming the whole thing. These words--dream, reality, room--they are ambiguous. Too big, too loose. That's something you understood too, giving me a hard time for my obsession with words. Words never mean anything, you teasingly said over and over, while I stubbornly insisted that they did. I knew you were riling me up but I never minded. I'm ok being the serious one, the fool. I never laughed much before you, or after you. 

Funny that this room smells purple. Purple has been showing up a lot lately. So has red, but I'm so tired of garish red, red that can't put it in back in its pants or stop slobbering over every idea. Red wants to be beautiful and goes to clumsy extremes to get there. Blue is serene and the color of the water behind the door at the edge of our bed. Yellow is nausea, black is the void, white the stars. Purple is all of these things and none of these things. Purple dress, purple underwear. Purple glitter and paint.

I want to believe you are teasing me again, tempting me to step through the door. Maybe the water won't be blue. Maybe it will be purple. Maybe my eyes can't see color anymore. I tell you I can't do it but you aren't here and I'm just talking to the dust. Ask the dust, sure. I'm not really in this room. This room doesn't exist. Nothing exists. End of story, beginning of words. But it smells so strongly of purple. Purple that dresses these words, teases them to life. Like you used to.