Purple

is round in the mouth
like a plum dusky with mist
on the skin tart and crisp thin
as an elderly bruise under an IV
marking fluid injection
into yellow flesh that pulps
in the teeth. A harp plucked
and dragged with spirits says
there’s golden light and juice
to miss once you’re gone.
The blush-blue crepe
of a grandmother’s chest
in your memory. Like film of her
a ghost of her voice returning.
And wasn’t it always this way?
Where you think you have a grasp
on where your body resides this time.
Where your blood and flesh
makes other blood that could kill you
without a shot in the buttock.
And you are only a summer visitor
in the life you’ve been given.

*

Jessica Purdy holds an MFA from Emerson College. She is the author of STARLAND and Sleep in a Strange House (Nixes Mate, 2017 and 2018), and The Adorable Knife (Grey Book Press, 2023), and You’re Never the Same (Seven Kitchens Press). Her poems and micro-fiction have been nominated for Best Spiritual Literature, Best New Poets, Best of the Net, and Best Micro-Fiction. Her poetry, flash fiction, and reviews appear in About Place, On the Seawall, Radar, The Night Heron Barks, SoFloPoJo, Litro, Heavy Feather Review, and elsewhere. She lives in Exeter, NH.