the dance

biography of yellow

her indifferent eyes with their black slits of infinity, the candle i keep lit all day when she doesn’t come home, the toes of dad’s socks, rings left on the mattress pad, the whites of his eyes, i dye my hair black and miss a spot, he says i’m his yellow bird and tries to take my shirt off at the public pool, the bus in a meadow we took pictures in front of on the way to arcata, we find a banana slug on the wall, the dress with a stain down the front, the dragon’s scales on my favorite tea cup, you’re a sunflower he says, i crush tumeric and it stays on my fingers for a week, we eat pineapple slices on a sail boat until our tongues burn, toucans feed each other bananas, the bell pepper goes rotten, the kale loses its color, the steak salt cybil rubbed on my bee sting when i found out i’m allergic and the plastic boat paddle curtis murdered the bees with afterwards, the inner petals of a bird of paradise, bob lemon’s raised truck: the lemonator, sucking lemon halves with salt, the highlighter cast on my fourth grade arm, yosemite in the fall, the watch from grandpa frank hanging low on my little wrist, the ribbons in the red tree across the street, the ribbons tied to tree trunks for dead soldiers, sickness, rot, nursing homes, the cramped room behind my ribs and just below my heart, grandma’s butterflies, spider eggs, the scarf with a hole burnt through, the rotten swing on the hill, the desert sand at sunset, a warning to slow down, something that makes my face look pale, the joker’s vest, i watch a bee die on its back; it stretches its arms out like it’s reaching for me and i touch its feelers with my fingertips, the mother of green; the wife of blue; the sister of the spectrum, the feeling of security; the feeling of his bedroom in the morning, the way the sun pushes through the windows and into your pores, the burn of light that makes you feel warm and wet and exposed, the persistent burn of that light that shakes you awake and shouts:
you’re alive! you’re alive! you’re alive!