Housedreaming, in color

My mind is a box of crayons. An old cigar box, the paper peeling off one corner. The crayons are old, from different sets. Some have lost their paper wrapping, naked and nameless. Others are broken bits, but still useful. The crayons have jostled each other, bumped their snub noses against the sides of the box, leaving a rainbow smudge, like a tub ring, around the inside of the box.

Too often I shut that box. (And not just shut it, but place it in a high cabinet, doors closed, inaccessible.) But today it is open. My hand sifts through the color, fingers the gray crayon to capture the leaden winter sky, the depth of the cold lake I see from a distance, my own gray heart. I pause and let it fall back into the box. It's not the color I need today.

Push aside the paper-wrapped sticks of color, searching. Ah, pumpkin. The sheen of fall. Coral, a heart beating in time to ocean tides. Glossy electric blue, the living room walls my brother painted. Lilac and green, the embellishment on a delicate valentine of a starched linen handkerchief.

I think I will color the world today.