Rosa

“Can I kiss you?” She didn’t reply, didn’t retreat, so I kissed her on the lips, the way I’d have kissed my grandmother, who she was old enough to be.

The picture above is not Rosa, just a stand-in for what did not appear when I searched Google for “stately black women, elderly.” Not there.

Rosa was a wonder. Part of the reason I objected when the old conservatives who should know better keep insisting that systemic racism is a thing of the past, a myth, a lefty lie. It isn’t.