2024 Day 21 – Purple

This sunset sky is bruised with purple cloud.
Like shades of kings in the Tyrian purple
Of a thousand ghostly molluscs.
Purple for pride, purple for mourning,
(Which sometimes go together).
I cannot yet see
The Purple Forbidden Enclosure where the North Star lives.
I would fill my arms with purple flowers,
Lavender and mallow, thistle and heliotrope,
And a thoughtful pansy.
I watch the sunset sky, remembering
How much it bruised my heart that, at the end,
My mother’s arms blossomed to purple at a touch.

Notes: The prompt was to ‘write a poem that repeats or focuses on a single color.’ I love purple but I sometimes have an ambiguous relationship with it.