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A plan for blue
Leni wanted to paint the sky above her street.
She put dark blue in a dish.
The sky outside was much lighter.
Leni looked from the window to the paint and back again.
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A little white
She added white and stirred.
A pale ribbon wound through the blue.
For a moment, the dish held two colors.
Then the ribbon disappeared into one.
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The other brush
Her brush touched a small spot of yellow.
Leni had forgotten it was there.
The next swirl looked different.
She stopped stirring and bent closer to see what had happened.
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Not the sky
She made a stripe on spare paper.
It was blue, but not quite the window's blue.
'Almost-sky,' she said.
The name sounded as if the color had made a mistake.
It hadn't.
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A few possibilities
She thought of a swimming pool.
She thought of the inside of a shell.
She had no pool or shell on the table.
Only a stripe that would not choose between them.
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An idea on the wall
A pale mark crossed the plaster near the window.
It came from light passing through a green glass bottle.
Leni held her test beside it.
The colors were cousins, perhaps, but not twins.
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The first new mark
She put fresh paper on the table.
Instead of a sky, she painted a long stripe.
Halfway across, her sleeve nudged the paper.
The stripe took a sudden bend.
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A place to turn
Leni followed the bend with her eyes.
It looked like water going around something.
She painted a small brown bank beside it.
Now the stripe had somewhere to go.
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The new country
She added a bridge with room underneath.
Then a yellow field.
The water curved past both of them.
Leni turned the paper a little. Her new country was wider that way.
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The right amount
There was a little mixed paint left.
She made the river wider near the bottom of the page.
Then she stopped.
The white places in the picture needed some room too.
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Trying the name
'River-round-the-corner blue,' Leni said.
It was a long name for one dish of paint.
She said it again while she carried the picture to the shelf.
It fitted better than almost-sky.
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Another morning
Outside, the real sky was changing.
Leni's river stayed its new color.
Tomorrow she might mix something different.
Tonight there was a little country drying on the shelf, and the water knew its way.
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