Coloring within the lines

After Ephesians 1:20-23, 3:18-19

I was careful as a child,

always to color within the lines,

those black boundaries

without which all order

in the universe would collapse,

or so my mother implied.

I was careful, then, to keep

my reds and blues

and yellows and greens

(but not pinks; I didn’t like

pink) and violets and browns

and the rest to fill what must be

colored but only within

the black lines. To slip the color

beyond the lines was to intrude

upon the formless and void,

waiting for the hand of someone else.

Photograph by Joe Shillington via Unsplash. Used with permission.