Red is the colour of berries I can’t eat and of cherries I can. Of apple skin and lipstick I don’t wear. The colour of certain leaves in Fall and sometimes of boats and toys and rubber boots. Red is the colour of a tee shirt I wear to bed and a girl’s fairy tale cape. It’s the name of people with red hair and a homonym for read. A sound relative of rid and rad and rudder. Red is the colour of hot peppers and robin breast, of cardinal feather and crayons and less commonly chalk. It’s the colour of roses and drama and paint (a woman once told me she painted her garage door bright red after her husband died, she doesn’t know why) and nail polish and rouge. Is rouge still a thing by some other name and why do women (not men) rouge their cheeks, paint their faces like a garage, is it because they’re so disillusioned and pale from the weight of injustice, of patriarchal society, of the news of the world, their own world, that they have to fake a happy glow?

But back to boats — I’m glad mine is turquoise.

♦