No Name for This Color

I hit my shin on the metal bed frame

four days ago, in the dark,

and it registered — a flash, a hiss —

and then I went back to sleep.

This morning I stepped out of the shower

and it stopped me.

The bruise had done something overnight —

moved past the purple into that other stage,

the greenish-blue at the center,

the yellow going wide at the edges

like the body explaining itself slowly,

in a language I don't speak.

I stood there and looked at it.

It had the geography of somewhere —

the dark center, the rings fading outward.

It looked like it belonged to someone else.

I pressed it.

It hurt the way bruises hurt — exactly

as much as you'd expect

and no more.

The color doesn't have a word that fits.

Not blue. Not purple. Something between

the two, with yellow at the border,

a color the body makes

when it's been hit and is working on it,

quietly, without you.