The Purpleness of My Divorce

by David Starkey

M

y first wife was the essence of purpleness. Purpureal, purperan, purplescent.

After bathing, she dabbed lilac water behind each ear, pressed amethyst earrings

into her fleshy lobes. Her lipstick was magenta; her blush, deep plum.

God, I bought her bouquets of orchids and violets, dug the speckled pansies

from our neighbor, Mrs. Cromwell's, front yard just so I could place them in her soft

grasp when she woke. I was livid for her, drunk with yearning as though my blood

were mulberry wine, every corpuscle reeling with purpurate desire.

Yet, like all things rich and royal our passion faded from the far end

of the spectrum to blue, and finally to a tepid green. This is the way love ends,

they say. If that's true, color me out next time, or at very least match me

with someone gray so that I never have to watch again the painful bleaching

of another brilliant hue.