Day 6

Challenge: Focus on a color.

In Praise of Purple

Yes, my hair is purple —
and, yes, it's my favorite color, 

a mixture of red and blue, 
fire and ice. It’s royal, but 

better than that, it’s “when I 
grow old I shall wear” Tutu

in all her live out loud glory, 
wide smile and laugh, indefatigable 

chain lightning glowing lavender 
from my head. It’s a way of tempering 

dissolution, of dyeing against 
dying, a pandemic yawp sounded

from the windows of my madwoman attic,
a fuck you to slipping under 

into grey. 

It’s in your face, man, it’s 
silly and bumptious and larger 

than your ordinary wife, a signal 
to my tribe of melancholy matrons,

meeting as we do in 
parking lots, saying "yes, dear,

you can" and a crown 
for every 6 year old princess

who stops to shower me with
ecstatic adoration.

It’s April crocus and June iris,
pulchritudinous violets colonizing

your chemical lawns, 
spring and summer sunsets in 

zero weather, 
shouting hallelujah in a Puritan church,

laughing and singing and dancing
inside this wrinkled skin 

with the chorus of hard headed women
who wore the color before me --

a long line of mothers, grandmothers,
of sassy aunts in hot pants,

of makers, doers, and survivors,
of loud, proud purple warriors.