Plum

 

I'm dreaming this week of the color I loved most as a girl: lollipops, bell-bottoms, raincoats and lipgloss--all in shades of plum.  Plum felt like velvet, smelled like colored pencils, and shone like my bike with the banana seat and handle-bar streamers.  A plum-colored notebook waiting with blank pages was the antidote to heartbreak, boredom, and rainy Sundays.  Plum was birthday streamers, long phone calls, and staying up late to watch Saturday Night Live when my big brother was left in charge.  It was grape juice, sparkle nail polish, and jelly on toast.  It was a kiss from George behind the corner store.  Plum was slick as a satin jacket or a song by Queen at the skating rink; it was TLA, lying awake in the dark, the thing I wanted most yet least expected.  Plum was a last shimmer on the lake at sunset.  It was a secret, a promise, a wish.  It was what I knew and it was what I always kept.