Cardboard Boxes

What colors would my life shine if we did not move all the time? In every home, I feel quite sure my bedroom walls know I’m here, that they bear the hues of all I do and hold my poetry as their truth. Then come all the cardboard boxes that unlike walls, do hold my causes. Past walls of white, yellow, blue and pink all smear into my poem’s blood ink. If one paint coats those who belong, whose presence is community strong, whose roots hold, growing ever long, then such paint has not stroked my song. I’m a chameleon, reborn with each move, showing colors only the lonely may choose. I am one all may lovingly embrace until I move and they forget my face. My hometown is painted ‘no place.’ My paint presence does not a reunion rate, none of my three high schools sent me dates. I know not the paint of a lifelong friend’s face. My paint is cardboard box true brown My family moved it from town to town. I am grown up now, an adult raised invisible, shaded with poetry, lifelong indispensable. One can move paint, even revise it, but unlike me, not all can improvise it. ... CayCay Jennings October 12, 2018