purple & slavery

I was sitting at a low wooden table in a beautiful candle-lit room. A low-set brown wooden table was covered in ornaments that I had bought to decorate the room: amethyst glasses, aubergine vases, violet cushions. I was dicing a purple onion. My friend and another man came to visit. I was so very pleased to see him, but he was somewhat distant. He told me stories about the women he had spent time with on his birthday.

Later, I was walking through my old high school with an old friend. We were between classes and were not sure which class we should be going to next, so we decided to go and have a coffee or a drink. We walked around the edge of the school yard until we reached the other end of the sprawling set of buildings. We walked in and out of school rooms that had become shops and cafes, looking for somewhere to sit for a while. We inadvertently ventured into a crowded bar playing loud music and immediately went to leave again. My friend A was ahead of me and went through the swinging wooden door. The door swung back and I was trapped inside for a moment, before I pushed the door open and joined her outside. Two men followed us out of the bar and forced us to join them; we were being kidnapped to be sold overseas. I objected and told them I was almost forty, but the men were certain that we would fetch a good price. My friend walked down the stairs and I observed how beautiful she looked. I followed close behind, but rather than walking on the stairs, I floated slightly above them. One man said we would need to do something about my crooked toe, but I looked at my feet and couldn’t see any bent or crooked toes, and felt fearful that he would break and reset the bones of my feet. My feet looked normal to me, although I was floating down the staircase.