Purple

Purple has always been mine. Unreasonably, unapologetically mine.

And if I’m honest, so has the little old lady. The caution. The lists. The checking and double-checking. The preference for doing things properly over doing them fast.

Jenny Joseph’s poem Warning is usually read as a promise: someday I will be free. I read it differently. I read it as permission. The freedom isn’t waiting for old age. It arrives the moment you stop treating your own nature as something to overcome.

The little old lady was always here. This newsletter is her wearing purple.

Read Warning by Jenny Joseph at the Scottish Poetry Library.