Purple Guy
Sarah Ruyle
→BFA ILL 2025
Sarah Ruyle, Purple Guy, 2024, watercolor and colored pencil, 5 × 9 inches.
I had a lot of friends growing up, though I can’t always remember them very well. There was a wizard under my bed, a festering rabbit under the porch, about a hundred gnomes in the garden, a giant sea monster in our pool that went away when you turned on the lights, and one black cat named Vermin that killed all the gophers. But I think my dearest and closest friend was Purple Guy. He was everywhere. He started out spending most of his time in my closet, so I kept an extra sweater at the very back because he would get cold when Dad turned on the air conditioning. Over time, when he grew more comfortable, he’d come out at night to watch me while I slept or to hang out by himself in the kitchen. He was made of worms and mushrooms and smelled like Diet Coke, with two devilish horns and many, many hands. We didn’t talk much, but for some reason, over time, his presence grew familiar, comforting, and warm. He helped me find glow-in-the-dark stars lost in my carpet and helped me remember where Saturn was in the sky that time of year. We’d explore the backyard and take inventory of all the bugs and all the moss, of the goblins and gnomes in the bushes, and I would see him wave at me through the windows of my house as I went to school.
We moved away one day, suddenly and abruptly, when I was almost nine years old. He’d started to appear less and less around then anyway. Still, I’d like to believe that he’ll always be in that old house, counting the butterflies and the mushrooms that grow in rings in the garden. I hope whoever lives there now keeps a sweater in my old closet.
Sarah Ruyle sees magic gnomes.