You Are My Yellow…Part 1

It’s February, and the summer is just around the corner. We are sitting in your car outside a coffee shop, which we particularly like.

You are holding a paper cup with both hands, fingers curled around it like you’re afraid it might slip away. There are people inside the café, laughing, tapping on their phones, existing in that effortless way people do when they belong somewhere. We don’t go in.

“You seem quiet,” you say, not looking at me.

“I am quiet,” I reply, also not looking at you.

You tilt your head, exhaling like you’re deciding whether or not to push me for more. You don’t. Instead, you sip your coffee, wincing because it’s too hot, and I pretend not to notice.

I don’t tell you that the world has felt particularly gray lately, like a painting someone washed out by accident, leaving only dull shades where color used to be. I don’t tell you that waking up has felt like an obligation more than a choice. I have been measuring time in unread messages and the number of times I check my phone without expecting anything. I have walked around all week with the distinct feeling that I am forgetting something, someone, somewhere I should be.

You don’t ask. And I like you a little more for that.

Instead, you tell me a story. Something that happened to you last week — something unremarkable, something about a lost sock and an old woman at the dry cleaner shop, about how she asked you if you believed in fate and you weren’t sure what to say, how you told her the first thing that popped into your head, which was that you had once found a twenty-rupee note inside a secondhand book and that, at the time, it had felt like fate.

You talk with your hands, your voice shifting in pitch, your face animated in ways I rarely see anymore. You are fully alive in the telling, and for some reason, I laugh.

And for the first time in a long time, something inside me softens.

I look at you then, and I think: You are my yellow.

You are the unexpected brightness in a season that otherwise feels dull. The warmth that lingers long after the moment has passed. You are the streetlight that flickers on just before it gets too dark to see.

I don’t say any of this, of course. I just sip my coffee and listen to you talk.

And for the first time in a long time, I feel like maybe, just maybe, the world is still a little bit beautiful.

Day 30/30

~ A

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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