The Aftercolor of You

You are everywhere
the color yellow decides to stay.

Not in grand places—
not in the cathedral light of stained glass
or the pages of old love letters—

but in the small, forgettable corners
where the world does not expect memory.

Morning begins with you.

The sunrise arrives quietly
through the blinds,
spilling that thin yellow
across the floorboards.

It spreads the way your presence used to—
unannounced,
patient,
certain it belonged.

For a moment, the room feels almost inhabited.
I half expect the soft rustle of you
in the kitchen,
the kettle beginning its slow whisper.

But the light keeps moving
without waiting for footsteps.

You appear again
in the middle of the road.

Those yellow markers—
the long, unbroken lines
we followed for hours
while the world blurred into distance.

You used to drive
as though the road had already forgiven us,
as though every mile
was simply another way
of saying stay.

Now the lines pass beneath strangers’ tires
and lead to places
where my name is never spoken.

Even the world’s warnings
carry your color.

A length of caution tape
trembling in the wind—
yellow against gray concrete.

DO NOT CROSS.

How strange
that the same color
once invited us forward.

We crossed so many things together—
time zones,
late-night confessions,
the quiet fear
of becoming ordinary.

Now the tape flutters
like a boundary the universe
finally remembered to place.

The market is full of you too.

Sunflowers gathered in buckets
near the entrance,
their heavy heads
tilting toward whatever light
the day is offering.

You once told me
they looked like small suns
that had decided
to bloom closer to the earth.

I cannot pass them
without thinking
how easily we believed
in brightness.

Even the fruit stands
betray me.

Bananas resting in careless pyramids.
Lemons shining like polished coins.
Corn husks peeled open
to reveal their quiet gold.

It is unfair
how something so simple
can carry a ghost.

But time does what it always does.

The sunrise becomes
only a sunrise again.

The road lines become
mere directions
for people who have never known us.

The caution tape frays,
loses its authority,
is taken down one morning
by someone who never wondered
who once stood there.

And the sunflowers—
they continue their quiet devotion
to the sun
without asking
who once admired them.

I begin to understand
that yellow was never yours.

It was always the color
of mornings
returning after night,

of fields refusing
to stay empty,

of light
finding a way back
into ordinary things.

So if someday
a song drifts through an open window
and calls yellow
the color of love,

I will not argue.

I will simply stand in the warmth
of whatever sunlight is left

and let the world mean
something bright again.