Forever Yellow

My breath tastes foreign in my lungs. It flows with the urgency of the significance of here and now.

Every day, hour, minute, syllable of silence has led up to now.

Now I have nothing to lose. I’m educated. I’m working. I have a home outside your never-ending maze of regulations built on a foundation of conditions.

Conditions for your support.

Conditions for your existence in my life.

Conditions for your love—no, love with conditions is nothing but an eternity of facades and fake smiles and halfhearted insincere words.

I know how you’ll respond to this. I’ve known ever since I realized what I am here to tell you.

You will remove me from the pretty little floral arrangement you’ve reduced your life to

Because I am about to tell you I am a rose that is yellow instead of red.

No, I will not turn red in several years’ time. Not when I am older and wiser. Not when I’ve settled down. Not ever.

I’ve pretended for so long. For you, I’ve channeled my yellow light through polarized filters. I’ve tried to act red, look red, speak, eat, breathe red—it only rendered me an unconvincing orange.

And I don’t like orange and I sure as hell don’t like it on me.

My breath tastes foreign in my lungs. Not because I will miss you, or because I will be sorry when you pull me out of your cursed bouquet, believing that without you I will wither away yellow petal by yellow petal.

My breath tastes foreign in my lungs at this moment, because I know that the moment I open my mouth and let the stagnant air and the quarantined words out into your sheltered, perfect little bouquet of a world, you will lose me. Your life will go on as though I never existed.

I am a rose that is yellow instead of red, and that alone is enough to dissolve any love you ever had for me.

And it will happen the moment my yellow petals unfurl so I can speak.