Little hands hold paintbrushes

Much more gracefully than me.

Incorporating them

Into their tiny hands,

A long-lost brother

Their phalanges forgot.

When I take a brush,

He is a foreigner.

My fingers bump him

In the street

And laugh at his accent.

Little fingers, chubby and with dirt

Beneath the nails

Spread paint

Everywhere:

The wall, their face, the paper, the air itself.

I have to wait until I’ve found

A canvas, an easel, a pallet

Paint within my pencil lines, exactly what I see.

Little minds paint what they dream, what they wish, what they know,

While I’m stuck with what is or what I’m told should be.

They coat the page in something I would call nothing

Dinosaurs and Superman and a little house with a picket fence and a dog and mommy…

They dive into their painting, like a swimming pool

Smearing paint everywhere, covering the page in blue

Because everything is right.

Every stroke a masterpiece.

I sit; posture perfect on my stool, before my easel, toes tapping restlessly.

The brush hovers and hovers and hovers and hovers.

Nothing.

No strokes, because any paint is a mistake.

Wrong.

Should be a different shade of sap green, add more cadmium red.

This brush is too thin.

Little hands are coated with paint. Their faces are already

Smeared with Oscar the Grouch Green.

Hair crusty with Big Bird Yellow. I’ve got nothing.

My smock is pointless.

I sigh and look down at it, disgusted, then take it off, lay it on the floor.

The kids toddle over, intrigued

We smear it with Elmo Red, Cookie Monster Blue and Zoe Orange.

My face is all painty.

My hands unrecognizable.

My hair has a brush hanging from it.

My smile radiates down to my toes.