My memories ride the brush into the pot of paint and are dipped in alizarin crimson or pthallo green. Scenes, words, faces, and emotion emerge from the pot plump and juicy, like a well-stewed pear, rich and redolent, and carrying the perfume of artistry. The brush strokes are sweeping and wide, or tiny and delicate. The canvas is primed. Like a body waiting for a lover's caress, the canvas seems to quiver and arch up to meet the brush.

I am telling the stories that float through my memory like the organza sheers blowing in the summer breeze at my grandmother's windows. Blue sky and bright white curtains that catch the morning sun on shiny threads and send it crackling through the blue room like sparks. The day ahead is long and hot and for the moment I lie under the sheets that are still cool despite my body's nightlong embrace. The curtains sail into the room and the blue of the sky bleeds into the blue of the room and the curtains fly and the sheets are cool and the blue soaks into the very pores of my skin and impregnante me with desire.

On the dresser is a Bakelite clock that hums and ticks and whirrs and at night I dream it screams at me and I wake shaking but quiet and listen to the creaks of the house and the snoring above and below me and count the faded bouquets on the chenille coverlet until dawn. Somehow I sleep again and wake to the blue room at sail. From under my pillow I slide out my notebook: black and white marbled, saved from last year's spelling class, half the pages blank and waiting for me. I've stuck the pencil in the top of the post that is missing its finial. My finges are small enough to pry it out. Black marks track against the white page lined with blue. I plan the day: cereal, bike, jacks on the porch, ice cream, dinner. I don't write of the dream, the screaming clock, the spinning perfume bottles, my grandmother's calls. I'll have to go home if I can't sleep at night.

I lay back in bed and and watch the curtains billow white into the blue world. Underwater I am weightless, in the sky I can fly, in this bed I am a chrysalis. The marbled notebook rests against my chest and rides my breaths.