“Yellow” for NaPoWriMo 2024 Day 21

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Yellow

You were so red, so white.
So much of you was blue.
Yellow is what I missed in you—
that brilliant optimism—
that power of the sun.
There was that black in you
that cancelled it out.
You were the artist who understood color the most.
That color created by the union of yellow and black, you knew.

Your white hair, confined in a pony tail
or streaming down your back
in your wild man look
prompted strangers to ask
if you were a shaman,
or declare you to be one.

That red that flamed out from your work,
subtly put there even in places where it had no
logical purpose for being.
That red tried to make things right.

All of us who knew you
knew the blue.
It was the background color of all of your days.
It was the blanket in which we wrapped ourselves at night,
trying to be close,
but always always divided
by blue.

For fifteen years,
I believed that one day I’d bring you to yellow.
There were splashes of it, surely,
throughout our lives together.
You on the stage, reading your heart,
me in the audience, recognizing
all the colors from within you—even yellow.

Finding the pictures you had taken of me
at the art show, looking at your work—
those pictures taken even before we ever met.
I discovered, after you’d passed,
that you had recognized
me even then, when I thought
I was the only one
angling for a meeting—
sure of my need to know those secret parts of you
that I will never know
now that you have given yourself
to the black
or blue
or red
or even to the white.

Whatever your ever after
has delivered you to.

A new life later,
I am suffused
by my own canvas
of memories of you—
every other pigment
splashed against
a vivid background
of yellow.

 

The NaPoWriMo prompt is to write a poem that repeats or focuses on a single color.

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About lifelessons

My blog, which started out to be about overcoming grief, quickly grew into a blog about celebrating life. I post daily: poems, photographs, essays or stories. I've lived in countries all around the globe but have finally come to rest in Mexico, where I've lived since 2001. My books may be found on Amazon in Kindle and print format, my art in local Ajijic galleries. Hope to see you at my blog.

12 thoughts on ““Yellow” for NaPoWriMo 2024 Day 21”

  1. kim881's avatarkim881

    This is so beautifully done, Judy. I especially love the ‘brilliant optimism—that power of the sun’, ‘red that flamed out from your work’, and ‘I believed that one day I’d bring you to yellow’. These are my favourite lines:

    ‘I am suffused
    by my own canvas
    of memories of you—
    every other pigment
    splashed against
    a vivid background
    of yellow.’

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