I wonder idly if you still like lemonade
And sipping coffee on the porch
Over a book.
The birds chirping drew your attention,
And you drew mine.
When I looked at you,
All I could ever see was yellow.
So now all yellow things
Fill me with a melancholic nostalgia for what is lost.
Ironic, isn’t it?
Yellow.
The color of happiness.
But you left and you took the yellow with you.
You took the happiness with you.
I remember you like this:
Sitting on the porch with me.
Playing footsie and trying to wake up with the day.
Always half tired from a late night.
Always half sad with the taste of goodbye
Waiting on the tip of our tongues.
I loved you like that, I think.
With the taste of goodbye always on the tip of my tongue.
My tongue is still saturated in it.
Yet, I don’t remember you at goodbye.
It’s not a memory that feels like us.
It has been 1 year 8 months and 24 days since
I sat across from you in that little French diner.
You ordered steak and French fries for dinner.
I ordered risotto and you let me pick at your food.
You ate mostly the potatoes.
At the end of the night, you walked me to my car,
Asked me to kiss you under the street lamp.
We stayed later than we thought we would
On our date that neither of us knew was one.
It felt like the beginning of forever, didn’t it?
I think I fell in love that very dinner.
I was a goner for that girl and her potatoes.
I have been apart from you almost longer than I knew you
Which makes me feel like a sucker
Because my chest still burns every day.
The absence of you is an ember that I cannot put out.
The fire department warned me it’s a safety hazard
And I told them that I know that,
But there isn’t enough water in the world
To quench the thirst I have to bring you back.
There is a hole in the center of me now,
And it is yellow.
There is a hole in the center of me now,
And it eats potatoes for every meal and drinks lemonade at dinner.
There is a hole in the center of me,
And it dances and laughs and uses cute accents in the car.
You are the missing piece that fills that hole,
The spice that is missing from every dish,
The constant ache of loneliness in a crowded room.
And I am a fool.
I have lost you for almost longer than I knew you,
But the truth is that I will miss you for as long as this burning heart still beats,
And long after its ashes are scattered in the wind.
I will be long buried with my love for you still leaking out of me.
The space I hold for you is as infinite and expanding as the universe we inhabit.
I will never be fully home again here.
There will always be that hole at the center of me.
It will always be yellow.
