Purple

Purple is the hour
between almost and never,
a bruise on the sky
the evening keeps pressing.

It smells like rain
on pages left open,
like flowers that bloom
only when no one is watching.

Purple is velvet thunder,
quiet royalty,
a crown forgotten
on a windowsill at dusk.

I have seen purple
in tired eyes after crying,
in city lights drowning slowly
inside midnight puddles.

And somehow
it is still soft.

Still the color of secrets
held gently in two hands,
of galaxies folding themselves
into silence.

If blue learned how to dream
and red learned how to forgive,
they would meet here — 

in purple.