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 from my gramps,      
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.