I.

Bumblebee and goldenrod,
dandelions in summer and the glaze
over tea-stained teeth. Sallow grin,
ear of corn. We are strong
in the morning, and less so
by evening. I even knew a man
whose mother’s skin turned a putrid
yellow after weeks of dying.
He told me this over breakfast,
Hollandaise sauce snaking down his plate
like a long Hearse. Silken yolk and the
yellowed pages of an old dictionary,
an unfeeling sky holds the moon like
a searchlight. She had forgotten
the last of her memories. At the funeral,
no one could recognize her face.
‍I think yellow is the innocent sun, I think
yellow is a hope, as bright as the end
drawing near. In our eyes, we nursed
timid tears. He took a long breath
and smiled sadly… But, he said…

II.

In the afternoon, we took a bath filled with fire. We
turned the garden into a lemon grove, burnished amber
sank to its knees from the terracotta roofs, suddenly
I dreamt of lakes filled with gold. Summer corn
and marigolds in January, there was no answering time.
You looked so beautiful, like you were in a commercial
for sun, and in the seconds before the sprinkler system
turned on, we swam in flames: quiet inferno of dandelion
and honeycomb, your chin floating in my hands. I don’t
know why, I wanted to ask if you’d run away with me?

III.

After I stopped loving him, his mother sent me
an email. Hello my dear… I found your … while I was …
do you want me to mail this to you? … do you
remember… ? I read her name like a bulletin: one
line in a drawn-out receipt of senders, all of them trapped
in my rectangular computer screen. I hadn’t seen that name
in a long time and I no longer winced like I used to, when
the wound felt like a bite inside a smooth cheek, something
your tongue can’t help but feel. I think she knew that it was
insignificant, whatever she was asking about. Sometimes we
make excuses to catch a glimpse of something, to peel back
the layers of skin, to open a door and find an answer
… I have my own excuses to make, unfastening the padlocked
box and sifting through some of the untouched memories:
the one hundredth morning of the pandemic spent in her
house, while we listened to the news deliver death after death,
and the bees that spring, still buzzing so blissfully, as though
nothing had changed, as though mothers could still hold
their children, as though hope had not been extinguished,
as though tomorrow was still something you could touch and feel,
the yellow bananas each day, sitting on the countertop in
the mornings: always the half left for me from the hour
she was awake before I opened my eyes.