vintage · the wine of bordeaux, cellar-aged
the colour at the bottom of a glass that someone has left out overnight.
the colour of a stain on the tablecloth in kitchen that no one quite
removed. the colour of alizarin with a candle held behind it.
claret is a slow colour, an evening colour, the colour of the hour at
which two people have been talking long enough to forget the time. it
belongs to vigil and to ritual but only their gentler forms — the
quiet conversations, the rituals so habitual they have stopped feeling
like ritual at all.
neither oxblood's gravity nor vermilion's shout. somewhere between
a kept thing and a spilled one.