i.
between adjectives and history, math and PE, school never taught us that colors lie.
welcome to your new education.

ii.
yellow is a happy color.
in school they teach us about vincent van gogh, and how he ate yellow paint because he thought if he had a happy color in his veins, he would be happy, too. the paper-girls who exercise fake distress think that’s romantic. it’s not.

iii.
secretly i wonder if i washed out all my tears and replaced them with acrylic, if i opened up my rib cage instead of my broken bleeding heart they would be only yellow.

iv.
yellow is the color of broth in aphabet soup, you make for me when i am sick. today i’m not sick, i just couldn’t bear to go to school- feel the stares of all the golden children on the back of my neck.
you are nowhere to be found, there is just the yellow broth beneath the letters in my soup. i can feel it staring up at me and now i really do feel sick.
there is only yellow.

v.
yellow is the color of the record you play when you don’t want to talk. you turn it up so loud that i can feel it in my bones. i go to my room and shut the door just a bit too hard, where yellow sunbeams light up my room like lasers.

vi.
i am conflicted.
yellow lights up the world and sunshine lights up my body. i used to think that’s romantic. it’s not. yellow is supposed to be a happy color. the broth in my soup and the record you put on and vincent van gogh play in my head like mice when the cats away.

vii.
i wonder i can falsify to prying eyes that i love sunshine because i am happy.
i wonder if i can prove to my dying mind that i love yellow because it is a cure?

vii.
i wish inside of insides, i was full of sunshine.