They wanted us to look like we’d been dipped in blood. Some fairytale figure in a red cloak. It seems ridiculous now to contemplate how important clothes were to us before. We had closets full of them. We took jobs we hated so we could buy more of them. So we could be fashionable. So we could be on trend. We couldn’t figure out how to get rid of them. So we threw them in landfills. We poisoned the water. We brought on ecological collapse. All because we believed that these garments that we put on our bodies told the world who we were. It was a lie. A lie Gilead believed, too. So they assigned us colors. They dictated what we wore. Who we could be. They used our clothes to divide us. To dehumanize us. But tonight, those clothes will be our weapons. Tonight, we will use these clothes to start a war. They put us in red, the color of blood, to mark us. They forgot that it's also the color of rage.

June