I could have just opened a vein for this prompt.
My favourite colour lurks there, pumping life through my body.
No, I am not a blue blood.
It’s in the flush in my cheeks and the colour of my lips, bee-stung and readied for a party. My favourite colour lends me confidence – in clothes that camouflage my insecurities and make them battle-ready, and confident, the life and soul.
My favourite colour is daring and dashing yet also shouts halt, stop, stay and help is on its way. It’s the colour of life and of life suddenly ceased, spilt on the city pavement in gaudy dismay. It’s the colour of danger and of help, of the Cross of rent blood and life lost, and the Red Cross of lives saved.
It’s the colour of my first hair dye, aged 15, that left a tidal line of calves blood on my mother’s white porcelain basins. The colour of my first ball dress – in taffeta mini skirt (the other girls wore shy whisper colours in tints of pink and yellow).
It’s the colour of strawberries and summer fruits, of raspberries, cocktails and summer sunsets.
My favourite colour is of course, red.
Loud, bright, unabashed, attention-seeking. The harlot’s colour, my ex-MIL used to say. But it is also the colour of my newborn baby the moment after he drew in his first breath.
Red is the colour of life and death. And everything in between that makes life vibrant, pulsing,worth living.
Look at these vibrant roses sneaking over the fence from the neighbour’s house, they are the bright spot in a damp sad garden.
My love is not only like a red, red rose.
It is, the red, of the red, red rose.
