My Pink Crayon

It began on a Tuesday.

The kind of Tuesday that hangs in the air like a question mark..cloudy, uncertain, not quite rain, not quite clear.

Kimaya sat on the living room floor, head bowed over her drawing book like a monk over a holy text. Her tongue stuck out in deep concentration, her brow furrowed with five-year-old seriousness.

She was creating a masterpiece.

A garden of dreams - balloon trees, tulip suns, cotton-candy grass.

She reached into her crayon box, fingers moving with the muscle memory of an artist who knows exactly where her magic lives.

But then-

She paused.

Dug deeper.

Flipped the box upside down.

No pink.

She blinked.

Once.

Twice.

Maybe it had escaped. Crayons did that sometimes.

She searched under the cushions, behind the curtain, even inside her slipper (don’t ask).

But it was gone.

Kimaya didn’t cry. Not yet.

She just sat there, staring at the pinkless kingdom on her page, as the weight of the world or at least the absence of the perfect hue settled on her tiny shoulders.

Her mother, in the middle of a meeting on Zoom, tossed out, “Use another colour, sweetheart. It's just pink.”

Just pink.

Just air is not oxygen.

Just pink is not her pink.

That crayon had been with her through it all the good drawings, the bad ones, the sorry-I-scribbled-on-the-wall disasters.

It had shaded princesses’ gowns, iced cupcakes, and filled hearts.

Now it was gone.

She didn’t remember losing it.

She only remembered her baby sister scribbling wildly last night-giggles echoing down the hall and then a sharp snap.

But no one said anything. No one ever does when things break quietly.

The garden on her page looked like it had wilted.

And something inside Kimaya wilted too.

Then like a whisper in her head came an idea.

Not a big idea. A small, stubborn one.

She picked up the red.

And the white.

Enemies, really. Red was rage. White was... pointless.

But today, they had a job to do.

She began to blend.

Soft red. Gentle white. Over and over.

And like a miracle emerging from mess pink bloomed.

Not the same pink. But a new one.

A made one.

Her garden came back to life.

So did her heart.

And that’s when she saw it her baby sister peeking from behind the couch, clutching a half-broken pink crayon in her fist, eyes wide, guilt hanging around her like a stormcloud.

Kimaya stared at her.

The broken pink.

The new pink.

The sister who didn’t mean to break anything but had broken everything.

She didn’t say a word. Just smiled. And held out her page.

“Look,” she said, “I made it again.”

Moral?

Kids don’t quit when something breaks - they build.

They blend.

They begin again.

It’s only grown-ups who forget that broken things can still bloom.