Saffron Speaks in Tongues only Women Understand
I am the color of morning,
the robe of dawn, the poets praised—
gold drawn from the throat of Mother Earth,
blooming in silence before men wake.
They come for my threads.
Three small tongues inside me,
amber and trembling,
my heart's own fire.
They pluck them gently—
as if gentleness could undo the taking—
and leave my body pale
Spent among a thousand fallen sisters.
They call it a harvest.
I call it hunger.
In their hands, I am worship,
a spice for their feast,
a stain for their robes,
a coin in the market of desire.
They sell my aroma in vials,
my name in whispers—
Saffron: sacred and costly—
but never the flower, never the woman.
When the sun moves west
and the fields are bare,
they forget I once glowed alive.
My color survives in their silk and soup,
while my body rots quietly in the soil.
Still, I rise each autumn,
fragile, knowing the cycle:
To open, to offer, to be undone.
My gold runs deeper than their hunger.
Even stripped bare,
I keep the secret;
I am the light they steal.
Crocus sativus
Saffron Reflection:
This poem is a narration from Saffron herself. When saffron is mentioned, most people think of the spice, amber in color, not the flower Crocus sativus. Saffron is the most expensive spice in the world and is coveted for its sexual organs, stigmas. Once they have been plucked, the rest of the flower dies back to a bulb and goes into dormancy until the next fall. Trade wars have been started, men have been burned alive, soil has been pillaged, families broken all because of this illustrious plant. When the monetary value gets stripped back, we can see the medicine of the plant. She can cure toothaches and the plague all while acting as an aphrodisiac. Her power and beauty are rare, and she knows it, but do we?
Heliotrope Song:
[Verse 1]
They say I turn toward the sun,
like a lover who can’t look away.
They never ask what it costs me
to bloom and break each day.
He loved me best at twilight,
when the sky forgot its name.
He kissed me for the color,
but he never stayed for the flame.
[Chorus]
Still I turn, I turn,
even when the light is gone
. Still I burn, I burn,
in the shadow of his dawn.
They call it love, I call it bruise,
the color they all use.
Still I turn, still I turn.
[Verse 2]
They crushed me down for perfume,
for a dress they’ll wear to grieve.
They say I mean devotion—
that’s just another way to leave.
My name in silk and sorrow,
their hands all smell of lies.
I was a woman once, now I’m just what dies.
[Chorus]
Still I turn, I turn,
even when the light is gone.
Still I burn, I burn,
in the shadow of his dawn.
They call it love,
I call it bruise, the color they all use.
Still I turn, still I turn.
[Bridge – soft, spoken or whispered]
The sun forgets me every night.
The earth remembers what I was.
Faithful, foolish, flowered thing, turning toward what never was.
[Final Chorus – rising, powerful]
Still I turn, I turn,
but not for him this time.
Still I burn, I burn,
for my own violet shine.
You call it beauty, I call it truth,
the wound that became proof—
Still I turn, I still turn.
Heliotrope Reflection:
My song, “Heliotrope (I Still Turn)” was born from the dual nature of the color heliotrope portrayed by Kassia St. Clair in The Secret Lives of Color. Beauty intertwined with grief and devotion entangled with erasure. According to her, heliotrope was a color of half mourning; a stage of widowhood when a woman could begin to wear color again, within limits. The image of a woman clothed in permission yet still defined by loss stayed with me. I wanted the song to echo a place between love and absence. Heliotrope is Greek “turning toward the sun”. The urge to follow the light and the exhaustion of always turning towards something that does not return the gaze. The song's closing line “Still I turn, but not for him this time” was a reclamation of heliotrope. St. Clair shows how color carries centuries of human experience, while the song shows that my heliotrope does not mourn quietly. She turns towards her own light.
