Greene

1.

I cannot say I’ve fallen in love with Greene. It’s obvious that I barely know, but when I look around and see that the rest of the world is green, it’s hard to not consider the fact that I may be a little green too.

2.

The grass has been covered so long, frozen and frigid white, I couldn’t even see the green of the grass’s glow. An eternal, greenless winter. But take into account California. Green is everywhere, so why have I just noticed it now?

3.

I lichen that trees take comfort in their fungus. I lichen that they don’t even see themselves differently than any other tree that doesn’t have a mutual green parasite clinging to its bark. They grow together, and it doesn’t matter that one is a tree, one a green, hairy fungus living for the tree, living because of the tree. I can’t say that I like the tree, because I’ve never really been green before, or maybe I’ve always been green and I just tried to ignore it until now.

4.

As a child, I would shield my eyes from green. I didn’t want to be green and I thought that by not seeing green—advertised in windows: beautiful, semi-clothed models—I could avoid being green. I’d just look down and look at the colorless cement tiles, and try not to acknowledge the beautiful greenness all around me.

5.

Just because you close your eyes does not change the fact that lichen is green.

6.

At one point, or maybe it was a gradual fade, the green became a background color, like the color of that strange building you pass on your way to work, and you marveled at its greenness at first. Then, after a while, the green paint began to chip as the spectacle of green was lost in the more vibrant houses, and you forgot that a house could be green, that your house could be green.

7.

But you just left your house the color that it was, indistinguishable and abandoned, instead of adding a fresh coat with the blemishes of your body’s bruises.

8.

Does green have to be so green? Can’t I just say I love to love and no color has to change that?

9.

No, no one can look at the house and forget that it is green, even if it is faded. Green is weird, Greene is meant for other people, not me, but it must mean something when a certain shade of green catches my fancy, and it doesn’t even matter that they are green, just that they are. And together you could be.

10.

And so slowly, but all at once, Greene is green, and you could be too.

11.

Unacknowledged by the FDA are the magical, curative properties of oregano oil. Take a tablet of oregano oil when you are feeling any cold or flu symptoms, and, like the Wizard of Oz in his grand emerald city, wonders are worked. If people knew about such a miracle drug, they would be able to buy cheap fixes from their local grocery stores without having to invest in a doctor’s appointment and antibiotics. But if the FDA approved said miracle drug (which is not a drug at all), prices would skyrocket. So how can you tell me that society can put such a high price on something so natural?

12.

This is erosion (Cavetown, 2018).

13.

Allow me to indulge you, for a moment, in the classic green we know and love. Spring blades emerging from the frozen earth, bear trees rejuvenated by the seemingly eternal winter. But take me from this place. Take me from this place and set me back in sunny California. No reemerging grass because it has always been there; no winter because, well, there’s no real winter. So was it the lack of green here that made me realize how much I really loved it?

14.

I’ve been colorless for a while now. Meanwhile, Mother Nature has been reintroducing herself as someone that a girl can actually love without shame.

15.

Maybe I’m colorblind. Maybe I don’t love for color but love for you. But I’m scared because I’ve only loved one before this, and he was grey, not green. The color that drains. I don’t want to hurt anyone if I’m not green like them.

16.

Maybe it’s not the color I love? Or maybe I don’t love at all.

17.

I don’t love Greene, that’s for sure. I barely know her. But maybe I love green and maybe Greene will help me find out. I could be the green fungus that gets to lichen a certain Greene tree.

18.

For now I’ll observe green from afar. I’ll observe the emerging Spring in its green glory like for the first time. Because maybe it is. But Spring is a little late this year, and Mother Nature’s been waiting a while.

19.

Her name was Gail Greene, and she never knew me, but I think I would have liked to.