Bruise

For purplish blue-gray, we compress the three wordsinto a single kabood—for the sake of time, I imagine,though what we boast in linguistic conveniencewe lose to limited use, as in, we would never say the lavenderfields in the pale distance are kabood, or the majestic velvetdress spanning the height of the mannequin, but the grislydiscoloring that is a bruise is kabood, the blood vesselsvisible only in their rupture is kabood, the stain that spreadswhen trauma collides with the body is kabood,but those days when every breath was tenderlike swelled skin, when grief traversed the whole of melike internal bleeding, kabood was not the tone namedfor my wound, and what a disservice to restrictthe closest shade we have for the conspicuous;those mornings when I loathed applause for how wellI handled my sorrow, a pigeon, a kabootarwould fly to my bedroom window before the alarm,before dawn every day, would coo deep from a throatcovered in ashy feathers, iridescent teal, faded mauve,would coo so deep it sounded like a purr, choosingto start her day perched on my sill, in the most frigid houron a concrete ledge, unlike any creature that neededa warm nest, unlike any being that needed healing