xvi. When I was sixteen, I had a crush on a girl who liked the colour yellow. I thought it was a weird colour to like, but I saw her yellow in her blond highlights, in golden medieval lettering, and in September leaves still on their trees.

xvii. When I was seventeen I slept with a boy whose yellow was neon snapbacks and beaten down skateboard wheels. You blame your migraines on his yellow, on stained markers and obnoxious 3D glasses. That was when I started hating yellow.

xviii. I still hated yellow when I dated a boy for a year who worshipped the fucking colour almost as much as he worshipped me. He saw the blinding yellow of the sun in my brown eyes, in my dull smile, in the cuts on my arms that he always tried to kiss. His yellow is eggdrop soup vomit, is filmy plaque on rotten teeth, is vodka-lemonade piss.

xix. I don’t know if she likes the colour yellow, but her yellow is warm mustard-dyed sweaters and goldfinches waiting on the open pages of twentieth century paperbacks and lit mason jar candles and chamomile tea, and my dull smile turns bright.