I cannot live in unpainted rooms.
No wall is left white.
I need warmth for home.

Honey walls beside pumpkin-spiced walls. Amber wood-grained lacquered doors. Warm, red, glossy door frames painted deep, wet red.
Chianti curtains. Lush, waving drapery hung ’round midnight’s windows. Drunk, long curtains falling slack and hanging on
to swirling wrought-iron rods.
Silky, oak barrel flavored rooms.
Rooms with tannins.

Not the sterile walls of rental houses. Not the over-clean of the office.
Not the eggshell, ivory, dove or linen of my mother’s homes.
I need warmth for home.

I need fields of strawberries in the Summer. The rusted undercarriage
of my Chevy truck. The soft, parted lips of a ripe woman.
The red of clay on the mountain side.
Barns, tractors, black eyed susan petals.
I need the coffee-stained color of my father’s teeth.

Sepia-toned, wood-framed photos smile at my warm rooms.
Frankincense and myrrh candles light the corners yellow ocher.
Bay window for winter mornings. Lattice shelves full of rose quartz.
Sunlight glitters through to highlight the cherry red Formica counter top.
Sunlight splashes on the teracotta tiles.
Sunlight rolls up the walls
I rag-painted myelf
while pregnant with my daughter.

I cannot live in unpainted rooms.
No wall is left white.
I need warmth for home.