Los Colores de Los Muertos

The color of remembering is both warm and cold, both blue and gold.

Donne proclaimed Death shall die, and Dylan urged us to rage against the dying of the light,

But it is so much more than that.

The color of remembering is both the feeling to hold and be sold.

Emptied of everything that once was, transformed like a monarch,

Returning to our ancestral land we've never seen,

why, rage?

The color of remembering is both celebrating the bold and the indignity of growing old.

Brown wrinkled fingers point to the sky where countless souls fly by in golden wings, for as long as we can see backwards, showing us our footsteps amongst the land that cradles our loved ones,

why, death?

What they call death we shall call all the colors of the universe. Wrap us up in your brightest golden hues and fill our nostrils with the sweet marigold perfume, even though we know well their cost. We don't cower by threatening you, or needlessly raging against you, but you do not own us anymore than the wind owns the monarchs.

We follow them in their return home, and flutter toward our ancestral steps we've never taken.

The color of remembering is nothing less than fluttering through the universe, from fold to fold.

Nos vemos.