by Nora Ray
When we took our mothers’ scissors and furiously cut our short pastel pink skirts into tiny pieces, it was not about the skirts. It was unwanted compliments that we put on the bottom of the trash cans, concealing them with thousands of phlegmatic “thanks.” When we trampled on fragile bottles of translucent pink lip gloss to break them, it was not about the lip gloss. It was their clumsy attempts to kiss us, which we covered up with hundreds of “no’s.” When we put the handmade pink pearl bracelets that our grandmothers gave us on our birthdays in the attic, burying them in the piles of our grandfathers’ old dark blue sweaters, it was not about the bracelets. It was their gazes fixed on our necks we could not endure. When we ridiculed girls who carried fuchsia backpacks—spitting peppermint gum on them—it was not about the backpacks or the girls. It was our awkward attempts to save them from the glances and the smirks; our hope the girls would dig holes in their backyards and bury those backpacks, then ask their mothers to buy them black or brown ones. When we tore the strawberry pink ribbons off our white teddy bears’ necks, it was not about the ribbons. It was our response to the terror of gentleness and elegance, softness and obedience, kindness and innocence, and we hid those under our bluish-white sheets.
When we put baggy black jeans and khaki hoodies on in the middle of the summer, it was not about us being cold. It was the armor we finally had.
When we said we hated pink, we never meant pink.
One day, we will take the pink pearls bracelets out of the attic and apologize to the girls with fuchsia backpacks.
One day, we will buy pastel pink skirts that will be just pastel pink skirts.
Nora Ray wanted to be a teacher, a doctor, an entrepreneur, a waiter, an astronaut, and, at some point, even an ichthyologist. So she became a writer to be everything at once. You can find her on X: @noraraywrites
MoonPark Review 