What Color Does When You're Not Ready

Three weeks and it still catches me.

The landlord painted the hallway — see,

it's yellow. Not warm. Not anything

you'd pick yourself. The color of warning,

of legal pads, of yield signs at night.

Flat and certain under the fluorescent light

that flickers at the top of the stairs.

I come home and I stop. I stare

for just a second. Tuesday I forgot

where I lived. Opened the door and got

hit by that yellow and for just a beat

the building felt like someone else's. My feet

knew. They walked up. But the yellow

got there first, and something in the hollow

part of my chest — not fear, more like

the second before a loud sound, the spike

before the noise — went off.

I know. I scoff

at myself for it. But I pause every time.

I can't help it. The color doesn't climb

to meet you halfway.

It just waits at the end of the hallway.

I keep walking into it.

It keeps being yellow.