Coloring
My parents bought a used ’65 Dodge Dart,
white inside and out, dad’s pride and joy,
and I, just a boy left unbuckled, untethered,
saw the back of the front seat as a blank
canvas, which I covered in patternless
Crayola-tones, an abstract masterpiece, faded
to black and white in memory. Consequences
swift but not corporal. Lesson learned:
elbow grease cleans wax off vinyl.
Flash forward to a different world where
artificial light explodes from all
my screens, distracting and assaulting me
with hues no naive technicolor musical
could have foretold, while a gloomy
future looms uncertainly in shades of gray
and sepia-brown, and my clicking knees
and knuckles count the seconds. Punishment
for the simple crime of having survived.
And now, having lived through sixty-two
gray winters, green springs, white-hot
summers and firework-bright autumns,
all scrambled together in a shapeless swirl
of errors and triumphs, revelations and deceits,
injuries sustained and inflicted,
I still paint outside the lines, with words
instead of crayons.
Brian Mosher resides in Mansfield, Mass. He has self-published 3 books: One Bad Day Deserves Another (short stories) and Moon Shine and Lemon Twists (poetry), both in 2016; and The Broken Mosaic (poetry and prose), in 2021. All available through Amazon. His poetry chapbook, Dreams and Other Magic (2023) is published by Alien Buddha Press. His unpublished short-story manuscript was short-listed for the Unleash Press 2025 Book Prize. His work has appeared in Blue Villa, Nixes Mate, eMerge, Books and Pieces, Confetti, Rituals, Coneflower Cafe, Written Tales, Esoterica Magazine, Half and One Magazine.
