I was three when I was told my hair was a Goldenrod shade of blonde, with a set of Cornflower blue jewels to match. My mother gave that stranger a slight twitch of the lip, picked up her cigarette, and yanked me away, leaving him behind.

At four, I struggled to create the best sandcastles on the beach, toppling towers of fine, Burnt Sienna grain, with an imagination higher than the Cerulean waves that ultimately destroyed my sandy moats and boats. My mother left me behind that day. I had crouched near the water’s edge and searched for shells and happiness until the moon was a Laser Lemon and the stars an even brighter shade. She’d returned the next day with a cigarette pack and a new baby, jerking me up with her one free arm and leaving behind the remnants of my kindergarten fairytale.

At ten, I strived to craft the most intricate mask for my mother’s masquerade ball. She said it reminded her of a rainbow, a crayon kaleidoscope of Shocking Pinks, Unmellow Yellows, Robin’s Egg Blues, and Radical Reds. I followed her to the car, begging to go, but she slipped her hand out of my grasp and wiped the sweat on her Midnight Blue dress. She exhaled a hoarse sigh, followed by a cough. The exhaust was Granite Gray and my mask was left behind. I found tissue back in the kitchen with a vivid Scarlet spray, and slid away to cry in the Royal Purple walls of her room.

At twelve, I brought home straight As in my Neon Carrot backpack. My neighbor, instead, brought bad news. She’d said my mother was rushed to the hospital with my sister, Violet. Then I remembered my sister’s fear of the Orange Red urgency of the hospital cross and the Manatee-colored gurney streaks of the Emergency department’s tiles. How she’d screamed when our mother was there last year, so much that the head nurse with the Magic Mint sneakers and Chestnut-colored eyes brought her to Psych. But I knew my sister wasn’t disturbed, or abused. She’d just always categorized those colors with those of my mother’s blood and cigarette ash.

At seventeen, I stood beside my mother, her Piggy Pink face a harsh contrast to the Sunset Orange of the Oncology department’s bedsheets.
“You did good raising my daughter.” Her brief, staccato statement punctured the air. “You did good raising yourself, too.”
“You never named me a Crayola color like you did with Violet.”
“No, I didn’t. But your father; his last name was Mulberry, a Crayola color that retired in 2003.” The web of tubes hisses as she reached down, producing an inch-long light purple crayon. “Whenever I forgot what he looked like, I look at this. It was his before he died.”

At twenty-five, my hands trail along the Gray of the tombstone, an entire history condensed in six words: A beloved child, a beloved parent. The Mountain Meadow grass flicks the bottom of the granite. Dandelion petals rip away in the breeze from the bouquet sleeping at my feet. I drop half of the Mulberry crayon in the hole, shifting my foot, transferring the dirt. The rain and saltwater tears pooling between the deep crevasses of my clavicles, I slowly walk backwards.
A lightening strike hits the field just behind the cemetery. To someone who didn’t know, it was merely a yellow. To someone who might have known one of the 133 colors of the Crayola crayons, it was almost an exact shade of my Goldenrod hair. And it helps illuminate eight letters of another Crayola color: Mulberry. On my father’s grave.