Crayola Mandala I am drawing with the stubby brown and purple, the softened red, the creamy black. Drawing circles in the centre of each five inch square filling them with rings or else with spirals. I like to carry crayons in case of emergency. I am filling in colour with no teacher but what soothes, a moving hand and no words.

Is it those circles or those colours, or

the wider circle of the day -- the sun, the bells, the meals, the work, the bells, the meals, the night, the sun? There’s a roundness in my heart the shape of a hug and no one keeps coming in.

Each time I suggest a body it doesn’t fit.

So I just keep feeling no one here, the ring of my heart encircling no one.

Ronna Bloom, Public Works, Pedlar Press, 2004