Common flora

Their purple tones bleed into a false canopy of soft, yielding leaves, and below them, these fruits hard and unyielding and as dark and lustrous as lacquer, midnight. Wild eggplants.

Pink and slight, like painted shadows. Oleanders.

A seam pulled loose from a velvet dress then curled tight like a screw, rich and fragrant with the sweet magenta of crushed berries. Coxcombs.

Level ground. Plane trees.

Large heavy like feathers of geese in broad daylight turning under human touch into shadows damp and seeping into a purple blush. Magnolia.