I wore white to the war. I wore it like a lily out in the open under the sun. I wore it like an open robe when the apostles turned away in disbelief. At the blood wounds no openings save for the thorns poking through at the crown, and a ring of gold in each palm. I wore white to the protest and waved a white flag of surrender to confusion, and picked up grey stones and lobbed them at a grey face. I wore white to the battlefield and drank a glass of white wine with the other picnickers. Underneath the nets we held our rackets but could still hear the popping and huffing in the nearby fields. Our jaws ached for lack of speech. I wore white when the tanks rolled in, and a black-clad soldier picked up a Mark 2 grenade and held it like a flower. Slowly, I wanted him to pull the pin, but slowly. The gaping wound at my throat gushed crimson on my white dress as I watched the screen bulge with the lists, and the coffins slid out of the choppers, dirt still clinging to the stripes. Through the static I touched names as they scrolled by but I did not find mine nor any pot of coins where the colors bled together.

Audio reading by Victor D. Sandiego

Sarah Rohrs is a newspaper reporter refugee who now uses her note-taking skills at political and church meetings convened to fight backward political strides in immigration and poverty. She moved to Salem, Oregon to escape the San Francisco Bay Area's housing madness. She enrolls in the occasional poem-a-day class, takes lots of photos on her magic Coolpix, and volunteers at Head Start.