White

Where I live, egrets lift their spindly legs above the speckled water, their feathers the white of light, the white of sea foam, the white of lilies. The sharp cuts of the boat hulls are white. Fresh snow is white. The spark of my engagement ring, placed on my finger over ten years ago in the first light of love, is white. I want to learn to speak the color of white – of broken seashells, bleached bones, empty pages, seagulls flocked above flashing fishtails.

There is hope in white. The first communion frock, the bride bedecked in silk, the white heat of fire ready to transform. White beckons from the tub of vanilla ice cream, from the crisp new shirt you barely dare wear for fear of getting it dirty, from the fog that piles over the green hilltops like dragon smoke.

White signifies absence of color, absence of sin, absence of dark.

In Greece, I saw white villas sunken beneath oceans of bougainvillea. In the Himalayas, I saw my trail disappear beneath a cloth of snow. In school, I watched white chalk scratch against blackboards, the white of illumination. The pads that wiped up my blood were white. The tennis socks at my ankles were white. The bull's eyes were white, alerting me to danger. I have seen the same white in a lover's gaze and known my days are numbered. White flashes, flickers, flames in wings of birds, shards of light, flitting clouds, in the white cells of blood spilling through my veins. The parched earth of the plains is white. Like pain. White is the color of darkness: white crosses, "whites only," white rage. White blends with colors of fury and redemption, feathers of cowardice and flags of surrender. It is the simplest of shades and the most complex of colors. It is never plain white.

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