violet

The wind bounces oddly- coldly- outside the raw pane glass in the hospital windows, whipping the rain-impregnated clouds into a dolorous sort of cream. On the sidewalk five stories below marches the duck-like ceremony of pedestrians, the waddle and cramp at each intersection; fat raindrops fizzling wetly past the window to land on so many carefully constructed strands of hair; so many faceless citizens of Humanity relegated in my existence to one small square of concrete. I press my face to the cold glass and shiver at their insignificance.

But here-- the cacophonous chirp of swinging drip bags and IV machines, the slick burgundy vinyl of so many chemotherapy recliners-- is my insignificant reality, the life that I touch and breathe and sneeze for so many hours every day. I run a smooth finger over the bruise-colored flesh of my sister's inner elbow, scrubbed a numbly violet color from too much blood and too many needles. I smile fiercely because I am stained too many shades of this violet.

The bird-like Bulgarian woman arranges herself next to me; she has learned to smile fiercely as well. Her smile is vigorous, almost frenetic, showing her pink gums and all her teeth, stained a vague dried-syrup yellow color from too many Russian cigarettes. It is a fighting smile.

The woman stretches out her left arm languidly, like a sunning cat, tracing the thick and virulent swoops and swirls of violet blooming like erratic wallpaper patterns across her inner elbow. She does not whimper when needle meets skin.

We stare down the sidewalk, silently hypnotized by the frantic ruffle of Humanity. If they knew how small they were, scuttling like frightened insects across concrete and pavement, stomping for a moment across the page of one and another crooked human conscious; if they knew how little their bustle really mattered in this stale-aired crucible of death and medication. How apathetic their small white faces- as if every wobbly second were not made of glass; sharply cracked and ready to shatter. As if life were a cheap pralines-and-cream Mother-Goose fairy tale, not a one-way game of Solitaire with death and eternity. If they knew our appraisal of life! If they knew the world in our shades of darkly bruised violet.

Fumbling with three blue plastic buttons, the woman pulls from her bag a scraggly grey book of poems. "The first, of my, in English language," she explains, her voice musty, thickly Eastern European. She rustles through crumpled yellow pages, bringing a finger to rest on a heavily underlined passage. Delicately thrusting a thick white finger toward the silent flurry of pseudo-life below, she softly recites: "This is how the world ends: not with a bang, but a whimper."