Matisse called it the color that sings. Iconically, he painted over The Red Studio in Venetian red, flattening the whole room into fantasy. Chinese brides wear it for luck and fertility. Victorian mourners were forbidden to wear it, because red on a widow was seen as appetite, not grief. A single thread, in more than one folklore, is said to tie two people together across lifetimes.

Every civilization has kept red like a secret, generally the romantic or passionate kind. Cleopatra painted her lips with crushed carmine beetles and ochre to achieve the color. In Renaissance Venice, red lake pigment was so expensive that artists saved it for single garments like cloaks or curtains, anything that was meant to make a grand impression.

Blood, blush, and lips. Ripe apples and roses. Cherries and traffic signs. Every shade says something different in the same unnamable pitch.