Black and White and Red all over...

Cover them in black and white stripes. Dust and picks drum the red clay road, kicking up rusty clouds the size of carpetbaggers' pockets.

Humdrum rumbles the hole in the window – sucks downwind and I hear the rhythm of the men on the road. Their faces are rosy as the pale sky cools. A magpie lands on an old barn. Coal piles shift and crackle under sifted snow next to an iron-red stove.

The children cry as their mothers knead. Flour sifts through the air around them, cottony clouds, sticky on the tongue. The black bowls fill with sugar and cherries. The ovens gape their wide red mouths. They are first fed, then feed.

Black skirts swim around my ankles, the rim of white hugs my cheekbones as I smile. I hold a thick red book above my head, its pages flap open at the vaulted rafters. Quiet now. The children are fed, their books are open, the room is cold, their noses are red. Clouds roll blankly against the iron windows.

Appleskin breaks at the blade of a knife. The flesh under the blood red is snowy, and the seeds nestle like negative diamonds deep at the heart, dark and smooth as the pupils of eyes.

Listen to a black violin. The man under his snowy hair strokes the strings, sounds like the color of your heart.

The man's hands raise against the air. His shirt is white. The gun is black, and quick, and dark. Death follows in flowing scarves of red.

Newborn cries, the whites of its eyes and the red little mouth are round. Black is the tiny fuzz of hair. You are newer than copper pennies that glint like fire on the asphalt.

A beat of drums pounds red in your bones as you run from the moon, bathing you in white, in silver, in the colors of the old. You breathe hard with your red mouth and run and run and run. You run from the shadows, and you run from the light. You run from the only thing you cannot leave behind. You run, maybe forever, into the blackest night you ever saw.

One day the road will end, and the sun will set and flush against sharp black mountains. You will pause for breath then, and you will see, in the distance, a humble white light. You will watch the sun and say a prayer, and then you will run home.