HOPE is the thing with feathers

That perches in the soul,

And sings the tune without the words,

And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;

And sore must be the storm

That could abash the little bird

That kept so many warm.

I 've heard it in the chillest land,

And on the strangest sea;

Yet, never, in extremity,

It asked a crumb of me.

- Emily Dickinson

- - -

Colorless.

My feet move mechanically, and my body follows. My mind has become deadened to all the senses; sometimes I can smell, and hear, and see, but all these things that were once so wonderful now seem bland and unreal. Yes, there are reds; clay reds on the sides of the streets and blood reds in the sinks and rust reds of the razor blades we use in the morning. Grays, too, in heavy puddles and the thick air. The faces of my friends are gray. Our lips in the winter are gray, our raw hands clumsy and slow and frozen.

There is brown too; sometimes. It is the color of the chipping wood of the beds and the dirt soaked into our pores. Black, too, the black of soot and uncleanliness and rot. Brown and black and gray and red. They are not colors. There are no colors in my world. There are only shades.

There is nothing to see in Manhattan. Each day is the same, a repetition of the previous day's work. Even when we speak to each other, we rarely say anything new. My friends and I have the same conversations, go through the same motions. It is comfortable, this sameness. It is predictable.

I sell in the same spot every day, a short walk from the tanner's shop. I sell to the same men, their faces a sickly, pale color, their suits gray and brown and black. They do not look different from each other. Their features may vary but they all have the same weary look in their eyes. They do not see colors, either.

This will never change. Always the same words, the same motions, the same footsteps. Follow through, and repeat. Always repeat.

Sometimes I drink to try and escape this void; my younger friends don't like that. They tell me I'm a real ass when I'm drunk, and an embarrassment. I waste my money on beer and girls, stumbling home in the early hours of the morning, singing at the top of my lungs.

But I just want to be free. Free of this! I want to escape this rotten city and all of the evils that go along with it. I wish I was back home, in Italia. Things were brighter there...it was warmer.

Here I cannot escape the sameness. I am doomed to repeat the same mistakes, to have the same conversations, to hawk the same headlines over and over and over.

Today is no different from any other. I stand at the corner of a bleak street, my eyes bleary, waiting for the day to be over. Racetrack promised to meet up with me later. I might even get lunch today, if I sell enough papers. Racetrack is the one person I enjoy talking to.

"Itey, we've got to stick together," He always tells me with a grin, "these other perdente Americano don't understand what we've been through."

Usually I call out the fabricated headlines whenever I can muster up the energy, my voice empty. I am rarely surprised or taken unawares, because nothing new ever happens. Occasionally I may get jostled or spat on, but I no longer care as much as I used to.

But something right now has caught my eye. I move my head slowly, my body unused to such stimulus this early in the morning. I haven't even taken the edge off of my pain with beer yet. It is too early, even for me.

Something is moving, and moving fast. This is unexpected - this cannot be happening. This has never occurred before.

I watch in dumb fascination as it alights on a nearby fence post. It flutters its wings for a moment, lifting one to streamline its feathers with its beak.

Its feet are black.

But its feathers...

The bird is blue.

Blue.

Blue amongst the reds, the stormy grays, the soot blacks, the rotten browns. I have to blink several times to make sure it is there.

I have to touch it. I have to make sure it is real.

I drop my papers and stumble towards the bird. It is my escape. If I can just touch it, I will know there is more to life than this emptiness that I feel inside my soul. My breath catches in my throat. "Oh, la Santissima Trinità..."It is beautiful.

"Boy!" A man's voice, disgusted, is directed at me. He taps my shoulder soundly, and with reluctance I turn to see what he wants.

"Pick this up," He demands. His uniform is so dull that it does not qualify as a color. He is a policeman.

I stare.

"Pick this up now!" He roars, annoyed, kicking my papers towards me. Several of them land in a gray, gray puddle.

Still, I stare.

"Are you deaf?" He screams, his fat face red with frustration. It is a nasty red, a familiar red. I half-shrug and stoop to pick up my sodden papers.

"Idiot kids," The copper scowls, catching me in the ribs with his boot before stomping away. Mechanically, I clap one hand to my ribs and continue to gather the papers. This is familiar. This is routine.

A heavy memory tugs at my mind. I swallow dryly, hope flooding into the darkness of my eyes, and turn quickly to look at the bird again. The fence is there; it is an ugly black color, rusting flakes of copper red. The ground is so gray, and the sky matches.

Italian phrases brim in my mind as I think of the brilliant creature. I remember my mother singing to me when I was a child, her voice rough and while her fingers were gentle. Her hair was a curly black like mine, though I'm not sure if that fact is an actual memory or a fabrication that I seek comfort in by believing.

The lovely blue of the bird is hot in my eyes and my memory. As I turn I cling to the color in my mind, praying...hoping...

But the bird is gone.

It has flown away.