There are those washed-out days, ones my mom would
call the days of looking drained, colourless, as washed out
as bleached linen, the aftermath of sleeplessness and sadness,
the palette minus primary colours. Those days would last
until someone or thing would snap me out of pallor, smudge
me with the breath of life that banished torpor, bade farewell
to loneliness, waved away anything faded, beckoning all
that vivid held. My soul felt blood run through it, my cheeks
pink with renewal.
That’s what this day felt like, the day I learned
viva magenta pigmented the news as colour of the year,
reminding me we need to find a hue reviving us, corralled within this time
and space accompanied by Covid, fears, and wars, our desiring tones
to take us out of ashen shades and into vibrancy.
Viva magenta baptises us with redness at its root,
primordial shade emboldening us, pulling us
from shadows, taking on a colour connected to our birth,
connected to our veins, connected to our flesh, one that says live,
and live more, and live more deeply.
One that, on my washed-out days, I’ll remember to bathe in,
swatches of the purpled red adorning how I clothe myself,
see myself, dancing away from dread and whirling
into possibilities like the sound this colour proclaims.
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