She Used To Draw With Sidewalk Chalk

By Abhijna Nagaraja

She used to draw with sidewalk chalk. 

That was before she went mad. 

She used to color for hours, and play with her dolls. 

She used to wear baby blue. 

Like the kind that the sky is in perfect paintings but fails to become in reality. 

She would judge the clouds and curse the rain when her art washed out.

She would say all those words she swore not to say.

She used to draw with sidewalk chalk though, when none of that mattered. 

It was really messy too. 

She could draw ponies or drunks, she could draw butterflies and dead men. 

She could draw chocolates and soldiers and stuff like that and get all the chalk in her hair. 

Call herself a hipster and tell her friends she dyed her hair. 

Then she’d get home and frantically wash it. 

One streak of purple away from almost murdered.

She used to draw with sidewalk chalk. 

She smuggled it from the next door neighbor and drew and drew for hours. 

She drew till her hands and arms and legs and lips were all dusty and pastel. 

She was a little girl, until she wasn’t. And then she threw out her sidewalk chalk. 

By Abhijna Nagaraja