Strange Fruit

“Southern trees bear strange fruit
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root
Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees”

Change the trees into waves, and the South states into the Mediterranean Sea, and you’ll understand why every time we open the newspaper these days we think of “Strange Fruit”, the incredible punch in the stomach in the version of the equally incredible Billie Holiday. Centuries go by, and we can’t seem to separate skin color and death. We can’t understand. Like we can’t understand that a woman like Billie Holiday could die alone and abandoned, with 70 cents in her pocket. But we’ll always have her voice.