60: P-5

Hope is a vacant green, like the fields that make up all of Cuba except Havana, because Havana residents suffer from chauvinism and Havanaphilia. It is also the vile green of the executioners’ uniforms, the terrified vomit faced with so much secrecy and impunity.

There is an hour in the day when the Cuban sun sets and sends down a green ray—ephemeral, horizontal, mystical. Whoever sees it is about to fall in love. When you fall in love in Havana, you can never forget the city where you lost your heart. It can happen to you on a roof in ruins, or in the emergency exit window of a bus (the P-5, for example, whose bodywork is a true green). There is no aurora borealis over the Caribbean, but if there were, God’s green insomnia would ease our midnight souls. The sea is also green, of course, and surrounds the island like a moving lawn. Perhaps the Cuban flag should dress its triangle in the natural green of healing and not invoke that raging red of the blood shed on our national history’s green battlefield.