Yellow

It's a new wound on an old scar.
Once it heals
no one will know you've been cut open
and emptied out once again.
There will be nothing to show for this egregious pain
but the new way you will walk back into the world...
wearing, not hiding, a yellowing bruise.

In the moment of impact,
even the hours and days and months and years
past ground zero,
it would be hypocrisy to paint something so dark
with a sunny disposition.

Dark is dark
and pain is never yellow.
That color does not exist when a blade slices fresh
into all you thought was closeted away.
But on the edge of healing
it returns.

Yellow rips doors off hinges
breaks locks
melts chain.
It has muscle.
It's a bad-ass color you mistake for a daisy.
Imagine the sun...the moon...the strength!

Yellow is the beam
that turns all your shadow euphemisms
into real monsters.
But it's no chicken.
It stays in the room
surrounding everything...
and you, dizzy with the need to inhale,
will gasp.

Bathed in a color so long missing
you will fight to keep it.
You will fight to be light,
with light,
in light.
You'll fight like hell
ripping a new wound into an old scar.
And how much it hurts won't matter near as much
as the bloody way you will walk
back into the world
a delightful shade of hope.


(Sometimes we receive a new emotional wound, only to realize it has a history that we've been wearing like an old sweater. It seems comfortable and even comforting until it gets ripped off like a scab. Underneath is that still-tender place that really needs the healing.)