It’s year two for me participating in the Fall Writing Frenzy, a kid lit writing challenge to compose under 200 words of text, inspired by one of the fall-themed pictures provided.

Below is the photo that caught my eye, and the words that it led me to write.

My Many Oranges

Those windows are warm orange. Warm orange haunts me, taunts me, doesn’t want me. Not right now.

Living in concrete gray, oranges jump out at me. There’s the siren orange that recently woke me. No sleeping on the park bench in that neighborhood, apparently. Their inflated sense of self-importance.

But siren orange led me to the truest of oranges and its sweet juiciness. The perk to spending the night behind bars is breakfast, albeit also behind bars.

Then there was the clementine orange of last December. A pig-tailed girl’s arm shot out a backseat window as her SUV passed the corner of Carling and Woodroffe where I stood, shivering. The clear bag also held mini cheeses, hand sanitizer and a five-dollar bill. I spent all but thirty-five cents of it on a steaming triple double.

The orange inside the metal drum, that’s a fairly warm orange, too. Last week, after Raul scavenged some wood and Ida found her lighter and my newspapers were dry, we stood around it and forgot about life not being okay for almost an hour.

But the warmest orange is behind windows like those ones, where one day I’ll be again.