I shall wear purple when I’m an old woman
Why wait! I was born purple and the forceps were cold and the lights so damp bright.
No warm tender brown hands held me. I was born purple strangled before birth no dream of wearing purple.
I shall wear purple when I’m an old woman.
Why wait! My tiny lungs want to scream from the place where EA was truly a sovereign domain.
I shall wear purple when I’m an old woman.
Why wait! The incubator was science replacing Aloha. Keeping a palm sized female alive after the Japs bombed paradise hoping to rid the planet of Haole.
Ha! Ole. No mo a breath.
I was born purple knowing being I could breathe without science the tide was gonna be hell.
When I am an old woman I shall wear purple.
Vestiges of my mo’olelo left memory in my tonsils and butterfly gland. Gill slits behind my ears reminding me of an ancient protocol.
When I am an old woman I Will remember who I am. At first purple called to me like a promise of … something
Something warm.
Something real.
Something welcoming.
An angry baby girl more fish than mammal the purple fish screamed for the promise of EA for her tutu, her grandmother who never got to speak all her pieces, for the Queen who told her people to put the rifles down, for the brother she would have who led patrols in army fatigues again and again because he thought it his duty, for the father who ride steel caterpillar scraping aina again and again because bit was a pay check but there was no ear protection so his blood burst in his brain. He was lucky he was deaf from that day not dead. Or what?
When I am an old woman I will write poetry in the dark nights of my soul seated under a purple tent.
