Maybe Maybe you didn’t hear the words to the Pledge of Allegiance you recited every day in elementary school. You know, the part about ‘with liberty and justice for all.’ And maybe you didn’t hear the words to the Star-Spangled Banner you sang before every football, basketball and baseball game. The part about the flag waving ‘O’er the land of the free and home of the brave.’ Maybe you didn’t hear your American History teacher when he discussed that part of the Declaration of Independence that says ‘all men are created equal.’ And maybe you didn’t hear the words to the oath of office you took, the part about ‘never employing unnecessary force or violence.’ Maybe you just didn’t hear all those things. Which may explain why you didn’t hear the handcuffed black man you had face down on the pavement with your knee on his neck, when he cried out “I can’t breathe.” Strawberry She pries open the plastic container extracts one strawberry examining it like a jeweler looking for flaws in a diamond. Perhaps she’ll make her famous avocado strawberry caprese salad or maybe her ever-popular strawberry brushetta grilled cheese. She does not see the woman swathed in bandanas, scarves and long sleeves pushing the one wheeled cart between the rows bent over at 90 degrees for ten hours who placed each strawberry into the clamshell container, the container she now holds in her hand. Maybe a nice mango-strawberry smoothie with lime zest. Peach Flower It’s the flower he remembers.
The Viet Cong, the vermin, the pigs had been driven out. And now he sat in a foxhole, one of their foxholes, cradling the delicate peach flower left behind. One of their peach flowers. Hoa dao. Forty-nine years later he sits in a tent under the freeway. Cars speed by, glaring at the vermin, the pigs. It’s the flower he remembers. It was red.
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