For purplish blue-gray, we compress the three words

into a single kabood—for the sake of time, I imagine,

though what we boast in linguistic convenience

we lose to limited use, as in, we would never say the lavender

fields in the pale distance are kabood, or the majestic velvet

dress spanning the height of the mannequin, but the grisly

discoloring that is a bruise is kabood, the blood vessels

visible only in their rupture is kabood, the stain that spreads

when trauma collides with the body is kabood,

but those days when every breath was tender

like swelled skin, when grief traversed the whole of me

like internal bleeding, kabood was not the tone named

for my wound, and what a disservice to restrict

the closest shade we have for the conspicuous;

those mornings when I loathed applause for how well

I handled my sorrow, a pigeon, a kabootar

would fly to my bedroom window before the alarm,

before dawn every day, would coo deep from a throat

covered in ashy feathers, iridescent teal, faded mauve,

would coo so deep it sounded like a purr, choosing

to start her day perched on my sill, in the most frigid hour

on a concrete ledge, unlike any creature that needed

a warm nest, unlike any being that needed healing