Learning to Color inside the Lines

It was a crayon drawing of a son of a fellow teacher, framed on her desk, that reminded me of how I used to draw my world when I was a child. And what it said about that world.

Learning to Color inside the Lines
Christopher Bogart

Remember when a house was an orange thing,
A simple square of uneven crayon lines,
Toppled with a purple triangle roof?

There were windows on this happy orange house,
With pluses for panes, and drapes once drawn
In a waxy red swag,
Never to be drawn again.

The brown line ground,
Burnt sienna, I think,
Grew stick stalked flowers,
Scribbled yellow and red,
Crayon fed to bloom forever.

Stick people populated this happiest of worlds.
My mother had a flip and a triangular dress.
My sister had curls,
And I was the biggest stick figure of all.
I was bald.
I was wild with a big yellow smile.

My father, however never seemed to be there,
At work, I guess.
Or when he was there,
He held my mom’s hand
In an effort to fan the invisible flames
Of an all too invisible love.

The sun was a big yellow beach ball balloon,
Tossed carelessly into the blank air of the white paper sky.
Eyebrow seagulls flew by,
And everyone smiled,
If just for a while
As they hung on display
On the Frigidaire’s door,
‘Till they fell
To the yellow linoleum floor.