Pink and Black

Last Friday, I brought my colored string to street soccer to make bracelets. By now I've made dozens and dozens of box bracelets, and a couple of the guys and girls still wear the very first ones I made for them months ago. Usually the ones asking for bracelets with specific colors will sit with me and watch while I weave the five strings between my fingers, sometimes in comfortable silence, sometimes making light conversation.

This last Friday, Vanessa (age 13) and Kimberly (age 14) sat with me. Vanessa, who is in "fifth/sixth grade," was excited to share some of the English phrases she knows. As I was digging through my bag to show her the color options, she asked me my favorite color.

"Amarillo," I said.

"Yellow," she translated with a smile.

"What is your favorite color?" I asked her slowly.

"Pink and black."

Pink and black. How appropriate is that? I'm telling you, I couldn't invent this stuff if I tried.

This young girl who wants to do arts and crafts with me, who wants to help me organize my colored strings and untangle knots, this girl who bites her fingernails, who wants to show me what she's learned in school and still talks about favorites...

...This girl who lives in an unsafe neighborhood, who lives in a community of rough, aggressive people addicted to pain-numbing drugs and who has seen and experienced things I cannot begin to imagine ...

...her favorite colors are pink and black.

Plant Ballads

The assignment was to a ballad about the life of a plant, describing threats to the plant's life and how it has adapted to defend itself. I hope you enjoy the results as much as I did... :)

[A rap]
"Poor poor sour flower
she needs a hood
and some food.

Dude winters coming.
You should hide for some warming in the night
but the sour flour
didn't know the hour
of the winter's power.

So the sour flower got some food
and stood in front of a tree she saw a hood
in top of the tree and the tree give it to her." ~D.

"Flowers attract bees with their colorful skin,
some defend themself with poisonous liquid,
on them stems,
some have spine to bit you up,
flowers are alive but they have different ways to be protect." ~K.

"It's hard to live in the desert,
I try with a lot of effort,
I'm not going to be insincere,
It's too hot in here,

But finally we got to adapt,
And we all claped,
That if we had light colors we would feel less heat,
And I don't want a problem like that to repeat." ~E.

"This plant love hugs,
but she hate slugs
she eat's bugs
she live's in the mud
but she was taken in
a big truck so
now they have the
poor little plant and
she was turned
into a drug." ~C.

[This confused student wrote a poem for his mom:]
"I love you with a lot of hugs,
but I love my slugs just like you
you are like birds singing on a tree
like gold birds that I can see

I have trucks of different kinds
and I bought drugs when I'm sad.
I can't stop of thought of you
when I go soon to the school" ~D.

"I am a little plant,
who likes to grow up
with water and sun,
more beautiful I become.

I need to survive
from animals and bugs,
from the sky to underground,
I wish I could talk.

But Jesus has giving me strength,
believe in him if you need help,
nature is my protection,
with sunlight and rain." ~G.

...I LOVE my kids.