Painting in Words

What if I painted a picture with words?
Would a thousand brushstrokes be too many,
or just enough to hold a life?

I would start with airy blues,
soft and open,
the kind that feel like breathing.

A field, wild and unkempt,
flowers reaching without asking.
A fire crackling just beyond it,
all of us gathered close,
marshmallows turning slow gold,
one always catching fire too fast,
the cabin holding our laughter in its walls.

High-backed chairs,
our legs swinging free,
not quite touching the ground,
as if time had loosened its grip on us.

A lake stretched wide and waiting,
a dock worn smooth by bare feet.
Rocks skipping,
one, two, three,
ripples carrying farther than we ever could.

The sky folds into itself,
purple melting into yellow,
the sun slipping quietly away
as though it trusted us to remember.

I would paint the playground too,
the worn wood,
the dizzying spin of the merry-go-round,
our voices climbing faster, faster,
until laughter became something we could not hold.

Then gold.
Deep red.
Christmas green.

Ornaments swaying in soft light,
air thick with eggnog and wondering,
who we might be by morning.

Presents stacked in colours too bright to name,
and somewhere, a tiny doll
dressed in a crimson plaid dress.

Earth tones follow—
Birch Bay, Cultus Lake,
sun-warmed skin and water slides,
salt, seaweed, endless afternoons
that never asked us to hurry.

There are more colours than I could ever finish,
textures layered over years,
moments pressed into moments,
blurring into something whole.

A kaleidoscope of memory,
shifting, settling, becoming.

And somewhere in all of it,
without asking, without trying,
the picture paints itself,
and in the final stroke,
it becomes me
more vividly than I ever knew I could be.