ANGRY RED

When I read that you folded yourself up like a bird I thought: that makes sense, I can see it. You are wearing a blue coat usually, if it is cold, and it is thin enough to fold along with you, and blue is a natural folding color, the color of the sky. Red, not so much. It’s the color of the cheeks of my Uncle Gustave, you know, as in Angry Uncle Gustave and the Meat Cleaver and the Angry Red Face Thing. If Ol’ Uncle Gustave taught me anything he taught me this: red is expansive; red folds not at all; red is best avoided, red is dumb and a big waste of time. Meanwhile, Blue is the best, blue is love blue and cannot be beat. But if not blue, and somewhere in between the two, you can always turn to naked, what we used to call flesh. Flesh folds up and hides only OK, at least for me, but OK is serviceable enough, when I find solace folded in a suitcase which is, although I can't tell in the the dark, canary yellow–very lovely, but another story entirely.