Her favored color
was purple—
paint on bedroom walls,
May’s lilacs at the kitchen door.
The color of night,
when moonless,
when a woman could
get away with things.
Keep secrets.
Pinpricks of light
and clusters of stars
blur from great distances.
When she stood
on the porch, looking up
toward dark orbits,
could she see the Pleiades?
Masses
in radiologic stellate pattern
often transform
into malignancy.
That was the blur
felt deep
in her breast’s soft petals.
What she wouldn’t divulge.
A spiculated lesion
inside, alone,
throbbing purple.
The opposite
of a white lie,
purple as any bruise.
She breathed into the empty air,
I’ll be victor of this dogfight.
How threatening her growl.
–
D. Walsh Gilbert lives in Farmington, Connecticut, on a former sheep farm at the foot of the Talcott Mountain, previous homelands of the Tunxis peoples. She’s the author of eight books of poetry, the most recent Misneach (Grayson Books). She serves with Riverwood Poetry Series and is co-editor of Connecticut River Review.