That's the color of the sky right now. The sun enhances the blue, downplaying the undertones of slate. It could be warm outside, but I have no way of knowing. When I came into the building this morning, the cold lumbered with me, moaning like an old woman in pain.
This day has moved with the slowness of a sea slug feeling its way across the textures of coral reef and shell, marking time with a figurative foot. And as if I were in the underwater abyss of the slug, the sounds around me have been amplified and distorted. Voices penetrate me grotesquely, violently. I am invaded by a hundred annoying turns of phrases that in an ordinary day would leave me untouched or amused.
My head aches. Furies rise in my throat, threatened, threatening.
Then: Flowers.
They arrived shrouded in her ever-stregthening description. Her words would have caused the goddess Flora to blush, caught in the caress of such a woman.
First came the African violet--full of royality and named in honor of her beloved Josephine Bonoparte.
Then, tulips, twenty-five to be exact. Two varieties placed beside her desk, blending both the old and new worlds with the shape of their petals.
My heart broke, pouring into the slate-grey blue sky, coloring the heavens purple.