- Azure adj. blue, bright, cloudless; (of love) cloudless: The false azure
of cloudless love. And when a noun – heaven, palate, the roof of one’s mouth.
Azure as in: The bright, bottomless vowels that once echoed against the
roof of your mouth. Or: Unstuck from your palate, here I am –
trying to speak your language.
- Rainbow adj. multicolored; polychrome: The rainbow underwings
of the butterflies that tapped on the windowsill. noun a conspiracy
of water and light.
- Iridule noun, presumed the brilliant shadow of a rainbow projected
against cloudy skies; shadow made color; shadow made light; a word for which
there is no translation. It is hard to say just what you mean.
- Opal once noun, now adj. variegated; iridescent; nacreous; kaleidoscopic:
“The opal cloudlet.” The sky streaked with opal – puddles of blue and light.
now a noun once more a gemstone demonstrating varied and semitransparent
hues, especially when pressed against a dark surface; (in Russia) thought to be
the eye of evil: The cloudlet that watches. Overhead voyeur, kaleidoscopic, many eyed.
- Claret adj. a red so deep it is almost purple: Your claret O’s stretched across
the breakfast table, your vowels crisp like plums. (See blood-black).
- Blood-Black adj. connotes the color of deoxygenated blood, blood without
breath; the color of blood that comes out like paste: Yesterday, in tending
to the last of the rosebushes, I pricked my finger and stained the leaves blood-
black. Or: Now that you have gone, I cannot breathe. The nights are blood-black.
Or: I feel this translation has become blood-black, opaque.
- Pale adj. of little color; of weakened color; of no color; of feeble
and unimpressive color; feeble and unimpressive. To pale verb to seem
unimpressive; to become colorless.
Sofia Montrone is a sophomore in Columbia College studying Creative Writing. She thinks that arguing with strangers about Lolita is a great way to make friends.