not crayons. color.

I have memories of things I don't remember.

The grass in Utah is colder than most states.

Like sucking the clean, white ends out of each blade and pretending to taste something. Dumping armfuls of it all over each other. The smell of it.

But that grass mopped the trampoline residue off your black feet. It cushioned all your scored goals, and you laid there, under a bright sky that you didn't appreciate, and ripped chunks of it from the earth.

Do you remember your palms, flat under the water that streamed into your white-rimmed bathtub? The one you filled with kitchen utensils and cheap plastic.  And the shower curtain that drew the line between kid-in-bathtub and whirlwind-captain-at-sea, where metal pots became boats and that soaked washcloth, a crown of deep-colored hair on your small head.

Yet, you never traced the wall, imaging the black pipes behind, that pulsed the water in thick cylinders like a heart pumping blood to everywhere. You didn't think of the money that was paid to run them.  It was all a mysterious blur of happenings, and you were a small subject surrounded by unsung coincidences.

But you're too old to eat grass.  And your mother isn't afraid of your balmy, black footprints on her entry rug anymore. Your barefoot goals and skinned knees somehow found you a jersey in a circle of other jerseys.  Every blade of grass you pulled from the ground, a tear was cried for it.  For every drop of water you splashed from that rectangular tub, a broken tear fell back in.  And you heard the water running, and your eyes traced the tiles on the wall, listening as it streamed through the pipes and fell in to comfort you.

It's a mysterious blur of happenings, and you are a real subject surrounded by colorless choices.

Colorless.

You want your crayons back? Go get them.

Pull them out of that bright abyss.  Your hands are steadier, and the colors make sense.  The thin, papery coloring books that were filled with lines are now sheets of naked paper. No lines. No edges.

Go get your crayons, and turn every bright, pale piece of this sheet into something.  Into a mysterious blur of creativity, where you are an artist surrounded by color.

Just, color.