Yellow Will Never Be the Same

"!Amarillo!" she had yelped giggling across the room in second block Spanish.
Everyone had stared
like the now faded, parlor wallpaper envies her lemon colored shirt.
Outside on the carpeted porch, T-shirts and ties mingle quietly:
makeup runs and boys wipe sleeves across trickling "facial sweat."
Edgy students stare at the cars slowing, lost inside, asking
"What’s next?"
Adults’ squinted, discussing anything but sadness:
waiting, watching, whispering,
"Was that laughter?"

An orchestra of sniffles accompanies your passing,
moans rising and falling in improvised movements,
impoverished by your absence, here at our funeral.
Andante. Tears slide slowly to rest on a friend’s green blouse,
she holds onto a life because has she lost one.
Piano. Whispers, a moan, a smile, walked past: her sister.
"Grand," I say. "The way it’s supposed to be."
Freon or something cool drifts between my arm and body
waiting in line, shuffling with the may humidity through the parlor door.
This is for us, for we visit a girl who has already left.

A little boy, in Sunday dress, innocently wonders what’s in the box,
around and around he looks, big eyes behind his mother’s legs.
Behind a porch post, I watch (with no mother), not realizing our eyes don’t want this over, because that means she’s over,
and gone for now.

1 Amarillo: yellow
2 Andante: play instrument at walking pace
3 Piano: play softly