My grandfather watches his program
On a ninety year old television set
Every morning
And every night.
He likes watching as the screen fizzles and cracks-
The occasional large black splotch popping up
The old man admires the withering tv’s great resilience
As it struggles to rerun episodes of Seinfeld
Although he admires all of the tv’s charm, grandpa’s most adored feature
when watching television on the half broken machine
Was the black
And white display.
When colored television had premiered, as a young boy
He despised that people were so quick
To leave the colorless screen-
submitting to the progressing perspective
Many were hastily including vibrancy in their daily dose of media
But my old man adored his big, black box
because of its old fashioned ways.
He admired the absence of color that it provided—
removing all complications
In black and white
He was able to decipher
Between right and wrong-
Separating the two in very strong, stern lines
On the screen
He watched a man and woman
With their black and white love growing
He observed the colorless bond, admiring
the beauty of a rare sacrament
However, Grandpa did not see with clarity
When viewing in color
Watching in a masquerade of hues lacked
the segregation he found comfort in.
The vivid colors disassembled the borders,
The linear perfection faded away—
fuelling chaos.
He watched confusion circulate
As more and more
Began streaming in color.
As woman lay among woman
Man among man
All grandpa surveyed was chaos
He believed it to be in color.
He is not wrong.
Humanity does not belong in the ninety year old black box—
Screening a view that bleaches
All of the colors that we have earned
While his colors of black and white
Remain in our televisions
Our obnoxious colors
Do not exist in his.
So he continues to watch his programs
On an old, outdated machine—
Pretending that a black and white world
Can exist outside of a television screen
And we watch, indulging ourselves
In the colored sights of reality.
About the Creator
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The Salt in her Voice
The myth says mermaids sing to lure sailors to their death. But why? The ocean is huge. Only 5 percent has been discovered by man. Why would a creature of the sea with that much space to roam ever care about the fate of men on ships? The answer, as it turns out, is not a simple one at all. The truth about the myth is older than the tides. Long ago before the first ship ever cut across the surface, the sea made a pact with the sky. The sky would take the souls of the drowned. Anyone who died in storms or any quiet accidents of the deep would have their soul lifted upward to the Heavens while the bodies would remain below, feeding the oceans endless hunger. The greedy sea however wanted more souls than the sky would claim. So it created mermaids. It gave them beautiful voices woven from currents and moonlight. It commanded them to sing. "Bring forth the ones who float where they should sink." it instructed them. So they did. They never killed out of malice but out of obligation. They sung to summon, not to seduce. A mermaid's voice could loosen the tether between the body and soul, making any man step willingly into the water. The sea would take the body and the sky would take the soul. Balance maintained.
By Sara Wilson7 days ago in Fiction
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