I think I began as a coloring book. Filled with colorless outlines of rudimentary pictures of puppies and flowers, even a dragon adorns two full pages. Rad, right?

One day a child took to my book all too well. She delighted flipping through cover to cover, just wondering what divine symphony she could compose out of my barren pages.

She chooses one page. She grabs her orchestra of markers and crayons and spreads them across the floor.

She makes a decision to start with a blue marker (cause it’s her favorite) and presses the tip against the page. It moves around with such ease that you'd think she's a young protege. She doesn't get frustrated as she slips gracefully outside the lines. She delights in it. She grabs more and more markers and crayons and colored pencils and blends them and manipulates them around the page. She moves faster and faster. Then pauses to contemplate.

Her eyes haven’t lost their light. Not even as she places her marker on the wooden floor. She stands up and walks over to the fridge, takes a piece of tape and mounts her masterpiece right dead center on the cluttered facade of her other drawings of mermaids and robots.

She steps back and admires her finished masterpiece. She is content in every stroke, every vibrant color, but the colors that don’t exactly match, and it has crumpled corners where she tried to color in every last inch. But it doesn’t matter, she dares to utter the words “perfect.”

She admires my untamed edges and wild colors, the ripped and mangled corners. She has graced my dingy face and has left me with ideas and creativity, she has made me… me.

Seconds pass, she turns around, picks up the coloring book and begins looking for more pages. She is the universe and all of her wonders.