Yellow was the color of that first house. The house with the creeping yellow fire, which the babysitter started and I was frightened by. Yellow was the relative color of Spaghetti-o's-- a staple of my toddlerhood when she was gone and I was hungry. Yellow was the apple juice that rotted my baby teeth out and made me a cute but fanged vampire. Yellow was the color of the sky in Nebraska before a tornado touched down, and the way my scar looked after surgery. Yellow is having to pee in a cup and the residual snot from a lingering cold. It is the way my bruises fade and the mold on my arm after I got my first cast sawed off. The yellow pills left a three month gap in my 8th grade memory, and made falling asleep a nightmare. Yellow is the cliche Coldplay song that always gets stuck in my head, and the color of Maria Luisa's teeth. Yellow snow is the kind you can't eat, and yellow #6 warns of the worst banana flavoring you have ever tasted in a saltwater taffy. Yellow is cowboy for cowardice, and the dirty version of white. The painful combination of "yell" and "ow!" Yellow is not mellow. Yucky Yucky Jello.
But then again, yellow is the color my best friend can't tell apart from orange, and the friendliest rooms in our house. Yellow is proof that the sun is shining; the warmth of my favorite liqueur, the sour face of eating a lemon. It is the golden hue through which I filter my evening memories, and edible daffodil teacups in Willie Wonka's chocolate factory. It is so many of those things he knows about me and the color of leaves in my birthday month. Yellow is hay on a farm and the blonde in my sister's hair. Yellow is my default color for drawing stars, and a hint of saffron in refugee rice.
Yellow is hello. Hello. Hello.
