Featuring story Prism by guest writer, Emily Doherty

"Right brain ... left brain ..." droned speaker. I doodled idly in my already embellished notebook margins and mumbled "No brain!" under my breath. Surely a crayon or two might still lurk in a forgotten corner of this escapee mother's pocketbook. I nudged my friend for assistance, but all she could find was an old lipstick stub, too neutral for my purposes. Not even a smudgy red pen or a faded highlighter. I grinned conspiratorially in her direction as we recalled yesterday's 'there-goes-another-flower-child" glances of other tourists when they spied bunches of scarlet poppies waving comfortably from a free corner of my backpack.

"Right brain...left brain..." One for words, one for images, and I, ever easily aroused and enraptured by both. Which brain was mine, I mused? Yet another hole too round for my perennially square peg. Images. Color. Why choose?

I cannot remember a time when I was not seduced by color. Was it petunias, perhaps, firm grip of my father's aging hand as we climbed short hill beside our house to browse briefly in palette of fuschias and magentas, violets and lavenders blue? Was it haphazard piles of velvet upholstery samples tossed invitingly on play yard floor of my grandmother's linen closet, beckoning me to cavort with kings and queens? Or bright balls of wool stored in shiny brass potato chip can awaiting her dedicated fingers to transform them into rainbow squares for afghans? Perhaps it was color words themselves, tantalizing tongue twirls of fairy tales and Crayola wrappers: heliotrope, delphinium, vermilion, celadon, burnt sienna, Endless as imagination, they lured me to delight.