Red-Letter Day

by Crorey Lawton

Early this morning, I learned from the guy sitting next to me that in Korea, you never write your name in red. "You only write the names of the dead using red ink," he told me. "Never write your own." We looked around at the other people in the class, and shared a secret smile at all of the people who had used red markers to fill out their name plates. And then this afternoon I found out that my friend Gilberto died from a fall from a ladder while picking an avocado. His broad smile is extinguished forever, and all I have is his name written on my heart in big, red letters.

6S

Crorey Lawton, whose full catalog is here, builds levees and digs mounds. You can read a journal of his project in Guatemala here.