coloring outside of you

I think I came screaming from the womb        
with an chronic case of      
what-the-hell-ever.      
And that was mostly how  
it's been until you showed up.  
       
When I was in kindergarten,        
we were coloring the ditto sheet      
with an apple on it,        
for the letter A.        
       
All of the kids colored theirs red        
with green leaves.        
But I liked yellow apples,      
and green apples,      
and red apples,        
so I made a striped apple,        
with all three colors sort of slipshod        
and bleeding outside of the lines        
in a merry visual cacophony;        
I made the leaves brown.        
       
The other three kids at my coloring table      
laughed at me.        
I was weird,        
because apples aren't striped,        
and because my coloring was wrong.        
     
When I was 16, on a whim,      
some girls and I  
drove an hour to St. Augustine,        
crammed like sardines in a 1986 Chevette        
with no air conditioning,        
to eat hand-churned ice cream        
and smoke really good cigars,        
until everyone puked except me        
and my girl T.      
       
As I sat there, puffing a cigar,        
taking in the tourist sites and the        
Florida skyline,        
eating the history,        
the street artists,        
and the man in dreadlocks singing        
a U2 song like a bohemian dream        
with an open guitar case in front of him,        
and I knew I could live forever      
       
I wished then I was old enough to buy        
whiskey for the cigar,        
or had the foresight to        
steal some
and a man stopped dead and said,        
and I swear this is true:        
"The only other woman I've ever seen        
smoke a cigar is my wife."        
       
I never learned about boundaries,        
and my light is more beautiful for it.        
So everything in me screams      
to break these arbitrary rules  
you showed up with.        
 
I think of the street artists,        
and I wonder if I'll live forever.      
       
I wish I never        
(cared)      
that you colored        
your apples  
striped.