1. After a week of heavy rain, the park was lush but muted, a landscape that perfectly reflected my conflicted feelings about ‘pride.’ More than ever, the word seems too friendly, too easily coopted by corporations and politicians that wrap themselves in ‘the rainbow flag’ but continue to reinforce the most regressive tendencies of our society.
2. In the park, it was a relief to escape the branded experience of ‘pride,’ to think more somberly about the countless numbers who have been fired or beaten or killed merely for existing, as well as those who have resisted by marching or protesting or not hiding their/our existence in the many ways that happens. There is, I thought, a better word to capture the need to dismantle the institutions that have brought us to this point, and the word is _______.
3. But the park, I remembered, is also a place for celebrating a diversity of existence, fleeting and beautiful. I stopped to admire a gathering of yarrow, heather, iris, and a dogwood.
4. The ferns glistened. The astilbe gathered. The iris shook the water from its petals.
5. In our best world, we are all flowers of our own choosing.
