When I was 12, you asked me my favourite colour-
Black, I said, Like my soul.
You laughed,
because you were yellow
and wise like the feather pen you bought me.
To write yellow poetry, you said,
your eyes green and proud,

and so I wrote.

I wrote about the yellow icing
glazed on those cupcakes
we made so long ago.
And the yellow cotton towel
you used to wrap me up in.
Then I took a photograph of your yellow hair - the sun's glare
reflecting off it

Until, cancer stripped it away
and left it in a yellow mess on the floor.
Then you understood why the cupcakes
turned to metal in your mouth and
why I plucked the feathers from my pen
as you lay paralyzed, unable to stop me
-feathers around us, floating too damn softly. 

And when I stood naked, 
a towel less child
without-
a mother's womb
you could no longer speak-
your yellow words stolen, floating
through and through
the cold hospital room.

Pretend we’re in Paris, I whispered
in your ear, when the feeding tube
was not enough to keep you alive.
We are now walking into the Louvre.
And I knew you were standing in front
of the Mona Lisa
when you smiled - 

But you did not laugh
Because you knew-
I would never be yellow
and neither would you.