Tati El Mallah
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Three Days Looking For The Color Red
November 2024
He said, walk through the palm house and you’ll find the red butterflies. This was the first I’d heard of them in the botanical gardens. Though my trip had not been well informed, no prior research, no primary interest. No, I’d come for the thick moss and date palms that stretched up to the glass ceiling and fogged it up. The entire room dripping in sweat. And as I moved through the thick air tangling myself in the many trees and bushes that sprouted from the ground, I returned again and again to the butterfly house. Felt my feet quicken and my eyes darting over the green, continually reminding my heart to slow and to hunt.
I never did find those butterflies but
I found that scarlet in everything else.
In the bushels and trees, in the forests.
In my lipstick stains against plastic cups.
Painted into three days.