In February, the dawn in the town slowly recovers from the night. It does not wake up with the screech of an alarm clock, but with the rustle of a handkerchief unfolding as it leaves the box. The light here does not eliminate the shadow, but blurs it in the clouds until it merges into a gray gloom like reinforced concrete, the kind that so many buildings in this industrial town leave exposed. They are strong buildings, but they bear the weight of a sky for which they were not designed. You look for contrast in the trees, but, now without leaves, they can only offer you the grayish tones of their bark. It's enough for you.
Then you see it. A Canary Island date palm that, despite everything, remains green. Its leaves move in the wind like the fingers of a hand. For you, who grew up with sign language, it's as if they are whispering something to you. But you can't understand it. The movement of those leaves includes everything that is superfluous in communication and none of the essential. You think that perhaps it misses the sun and the heat of the Canary Islands, but it is just a plant. It cannot desire.
Years pass and you go to live in Lanzarote. At first, you notice the palm trees, but after months, it starts to happen to you like with streetlights: you see them but you don't notice them. One morning, unexpectedly, the gray sky you fled settles over the island. And again, you find yourself staring at the leaves of a palm tree. Shaken by the wind, they scream at you. You observe them as one listens to the white noise of a poorly tuned radio. You hear fragments of words similar to tree, wind, fire... But no matter how hard you try, you don't understand. Something comes from inside the palm tree, but it stops halfway before reaching language, as if asking for something it doesn't need and you don't have. It is a voice and nothing more.
But the gray doesn't last long in the Lanzarote sky. The blue returns, although now you see it as more grayish than before. You lower your gaze to your hands, those that for so many people have been your other voice and at the same time the voice of others. You look at your bracelets, your rings, the polish on your nails... and then you see it: grayish blue. You look back at the palm tree and see the green of its leaves, of its hands, of its voice. A green that was there even in the weakest dawn when everything seemed gray. And you want to paint your nails green. Not as another voice that you have to interpret for yourself or translate for others, but as a voice and nothing more. And it's enough for you.
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