When I was little, I always wondered why my mother loved yellow. I pictured her saying Softly to herself “Yellow is the only color that insists on arriving”. outside, afternoon light spills through the window, turning everything yellow. My mother always knew how to wait. she waits beside sleep, beside sorrow, beside daughters who leave themselves in pieces. She waits the way rivers wait for rain with an impossible faith that what has wandered away still remembers the way back. the room fills with yellow. It arrives the way pollen lands on skin, the way a blessing settles over bowed heads. The light gathers around her shoulders until I cannot tell where my mother ends and the afternoon begins. she turns her head toward the window as if light has remembered our names. I imagine it has.
