Everyone bleeds red, no matter how big the wound. It’s nothing but a pigment. What if nothing about that was actually beautiful? Just a sea of red that makes us the same but so different, all at once. Maybe the storm was never tamed. Could have all led back to one spot. Like the veins that pump life through us.

But then I think of how I felt so lonely in the back seat of your car. How my stomach sank every time the moon bobbed in and out of the rear view mirror. How the thrill of it all kept me awake. How the red openings around my fingernails stung for days after I peeled the skin away.

I think that’s some sort of stroke of serendipity that made me remember these things: I came into the world screaming. My heart skipped a few beats, but they put it back on pace because they knew what a heartbeat was supposed to sound like. How my father smiled in a crowd and it made me feel safe in a strange place. When the treetops swayed too loudly and I knew to go inside because my knees started to feel like they were breaking. When our hands met and we all felt warmth in nighttime air. When I’m laughing too hard and my mind has to remind my lungs to let air in.

I guess these things are so much more than red. I bled from my mouth when your fist met my lip. I smiled when the plasma and teeth glistened under the street lamp and you knew it would change everything. That was the last night we said the word, friendship. That’s more than a slice through skin. That’s more than a color. That’s more than an occurrence. It took my reds and shoved them against the whites of my teeth to make pink like the color of my heart. And we changed colors like the seasons, even though it ended with a fist. So I don’t think that red is simply a color. It’s so much more than a pigment. It’s a feeling. It’s a reason. It’s a choice. It’s the aftermath of what brought us here. I have the scar to prove it. AMT