Color
I walk the streets of my neighborhood. I see spring happening every day in timid bulbs that change into flowers: first the yellow buttercups and dandelions, then ultra pink magnolias, white cherry blossoms, rhododendrons. The suburban grass is manicured and boring, with automatic sprinklers popping up here and there. There are no mountains in sight. I walk alone, with a red mask over my face. A lot of neighbors venture outside riding bikes or walking their well-behaved dogs. Soon I will be able to wear shorts and the air conditioning will be humming inside the house. It’s June in New York, but this is not going to be an ordinary summer.
Thousands are walking the streets now. We walk, we march, we raise our fists, we wear black, but our skins show all shades. We are angry, frustrated, tired. Many in this country have no manicured lawn or well-behaved dogs. Police dogs come to bite them with sharp teeth. Sometimes police kill them in plain sight. Like crushing a spider or a cockroach on the sidewalk.
We will walk until some people become color blind.
Once I walked in the woods with my daughter when she was three. We took a little metal pail and we picked up blackberries in the end of August. We filled the pail, went back home and her grandmother baked us a perfect blackberry pie. As we ate the pie with lots of fresh cream, she asked me why blackberries were called like that if they were actually red.
“Well, black, green, purple, white, red, does it really make a difference in how good they are?”