I ramble through my old town, missing you,
even though these were never streets we knew  

together. I pick up things. Then, I buy them. Now,
everything’s spread on the bed at the home  

where I’m staying. & it’s all purple. It’s all you. Every
last bit of it & I don’t know what to do. My hands  

stained just another envy I still own. I pick up
three postcards, the photographer an old friend.  

Her expert eye fades through fields of overshot
chrysanthemums. On another, a bulb show, various  

stages of collapsed anemones. What’s not purple
is yellow—day lilies, mums’ stubborn centers,  

& a sweet double tulip. It, then, double exposed.
Beyond this, a book from the bargain bin—  

a resource on plants from Maryland to Maine.
On the cover, two tentative crocuses striate purple  

& white. Their yolk-yellow stamens break open
as they bloom. Then, the crocus takes a turn  

to double on a vintage handkerchief. Embroidered
two-toned petals with a matching scalloped edge,  

one pass of perfect mid-purple thread. I’m drenched
in you. I try to cleanse my palette with a slim  

book of poems. Local poet, a dollar to read her
two-decade-removed authority on heartbreak—  

the divorce & I don’t know what else. On the bed,
I absent-mindedly flip through muted pages flicked  

with words I don’t read until bright purple endsheets
appear unexpectedly like sudden, saturated grief.