10. The off-off eggshell white of the bathtub in the house that I rent.
9. The dingy, scratched-up, drawn on with crayon and indelible ink flat white of my home office walls, formally the walls of my twin girls’ bedroom when they were younger, in the house that I rent.
8. The yellowing made to mimic yellow white of the “flipper,” or dental appliance, or partial dental, or whatever the fuck you want to call it white.
7. Industrial electronic white, against a white board, beneath a sign that reads “Do not write on with Dry Erase Markers. This is a Smart Board!” of the Smart Board white, a useless piece of equipment white, the white void of possibility white in one of the classrooms where I teach in Fitchburg, Massachusetts.
6. Massachusetts. It’s so white.
5. April snow clinging onto a dying winter—the death of a season that means death—curbed and pissed on, mixed with salt and sand and dirt and pour offs for dead homies white.
4. The welcomed noise of air conditioners, humidifiers, dehumidifiers, and the noise between stations on analog radios white.
3. Chalk for the antiquated blackboards in one of the rooms where I teach in Fitchburg, Massachusetts. I hear the math professors prefer blackboards. Someone has to.
2. The GOP. Maybe they should be number ten? I don’t know. I just know that no matter how many faces of color they parade behind them, they so white. So, so white.
1. The rest of this page. The rest of any page. The empty pages of any notebook. Printers full of yet to be printed ideas, thoughts, dreams. Digital and physical pieces of possibilities.
You might remember DeMisty from such year-end top tens lists as her other one that appears in this annual collection. Or from any number of great stories of DeMisty’s you may have read online or in, oh I don’t know, The Best Small Fictions 2019 anthology. Oh yeah.
