11.08.17
She is a Yellow-Orange
She is a yellow-orange. So when I don’t wear it, I think it. I think through it. A yellow-orange membrane, it sits just below my skin and sifts everything my senses take in from the world. Beneath my fingertips, behind my retina, the things with yellow-orange in their souls move past. They can stay. I soak them in, I keep them.
Yellow-orange is moreso a feeling than a color. A thing can look it, but not be it in the slightest. These are called Deceptions, and they are the worst kinds of things. They can’t move past the membrane. They cannot stay. I cough, cry, and sneeze them out. On days when too many of these enter my body, people think I’m sick. I suppose in a way I am sick, but with longing. Longing for the real yellow-orange, longing for her.
The real yellow-orange is warm. It has a big smile and a cute, tinkering laugh. My yellow umbrella, blue bag, egg salad sandwiches, backyard stray kittens, piano music, laughs, coral lipsticks, and paintings are all yellow-orange. These things keep me alive.
Yellow-orange saved me. When her live, human breaths ceased, her yellow-orange continued to breathe. It took flight. It spread. It breathed yellow-orange into everything deserving of it and of her.
The moment she died, I was about twenty feet away from my apartment. The entire walk home I felt my throat get larger and larger. It was preparing itself for the moment. When the moment happened, a huge gust of wind forefronted my entire body, halting my gait and opening my throat into a cry. It was the kind of cry that shoots your chin to the sky and pierces your eyes so that they recede behind two fatigued fissures, safe.
The trees lining the sidewalk quaked and shivered. Their leaves were just starting to turn, most still a humble green, but some a budding yellow-orange. And as my eyes opened, I realized I was crying a color. I was crying that color, the color. I was standing in it. My feet began to move and I made yellow-orange footprints up the front steps, through the house and into my room. I collapsed on my bed and poof a cloud of yellow-orange arose. It filled the air. It cradled me, filled me, and I became it.
Twenty minutes after the moment happened, I got the call. She left us, Sweetie, with sunlight on her face. She was the most special. She loved you so, so much.
My yellow-orange heart throbbed and spilled down my cheeks. It bemoaned for him, her son, my father. God, I’m so, so sorry. You’re the most special, too.
...and when did she?
About twenty minutes ago. Oh, she loved you. So much.
I don’t particularly believe in signs, but I do believe in yellow-orange. It’s alive, scattered amongst even the smallest crevices of the universe. A membrane, sitting behind the eyes and below the fingertips of all that is good.