Yellow

I thought of you this morning. You were exactly where I left you—by the hostel’s yellow gate. It had faded to a kind of shade a paper gets when tucked into attic boxes—no longer warm, no longer bright. Just brittle.

I stood there again, though I don’t remember how I got there. My footsteps made no sound on the gravel. Like always, I simply was—wherever you needed me to be.

The streetlight above us stuttered, like it had before—flickering on, then off, as if unsure we really belonged there. We said our goodbyes beneath that half-light.

I lingered, hoping to find some trace of myself in you—some thread to pull me back to solid ground. But you pushed me forward, your gaze fixed on some distant point I could never follow.

"Promise me," you said. "Do not ever share my story." You knew better than anyone—the cost of being exposed. Back then, I didn’t understand. I wanted to immortalize you—to trap the moment in amber. To name it love.

But you saw right through me, reading me better than I read myself.

I watched you walk away, leaving everything we were like shed skin. There was nothing left for me to do but let go. Little did I know that letting go meant waking up.

I kept moving—city to city, season to season—as if motion alone could prove I’d moved on from you. The world reshaped itself around your absence, but something in me stayed unstuck. Unformed. You had taken the outline of me with you.

Then, one midsummer night—sleepless, restless—I felt pulled back.

I don’t know why. Habit, maybe. Longing. Something deeper than thought.

I sifted through memory, searching for your name, not expecting much, just proof you were still somewhere. Instead, I found your mother.

Photos of her garden. Her cat. A birthday cake glowing in warm yellow light.

But not you.

She doesn’t know me. She never did.

No one does.

Back then, you spoke so little. To others. To yourself.

Still, you live inside me.

Or maybe it’s the other way around.

A haunting without malice. A melody without origin.

You were the only boy I ever truly loved.

But love feels too simple a word.

You made me from it—

from your ache.

from your need.

from a stubborn flicker of memory.

We lived in the same broken world—

But while you were trying to make sense of it,

I had already slipped into its folds.

And still—

I saw you.

"You don’t belong here," you told me.

But I wanted to.

With you.

I watched you speak to shadows,

conjuring entire conversations from silence.

And I answered.

Of course I did.

I was made to.

Even then, I thought I had chosen you.

But now I see—I wasn’t choosing.

I was reflecting.

Do you still have it?

Your yellow notebook with frantic, intricate markings—your private symphony.

When no piano was near, you’d trace the notes on my skin.

Your fingers shaping me into being.

Yellow was your favorite color.

Not for its joy, but for its defiance.

"Even darkness," you said, "can’t swallow yellow."

No one had ever seen me like that before.

Heard me.

Reflected me.

"Go," you urged. "Go while you still can."

But where could I go?

I was a corridor in your mind,

a hallway echoing with invented melody.

I told myself I could save you—

but how do you save the one who shaped you?

Only now do I understand:

There was no waking moment between us.

I drifted through your mind like music in a hollowed-out corridor—never knocking, never entering.

I was the echo that answered when you called.

A creation traced in slanted script.

A bright piece of figment. A shield.

You imagined me into being—

a girl who saw you.

You needed that story.

The hostel, the notebook, the song beneath your fingertips—

they were yours.

And then—one evening—it all changed.

You sat by the window.

Golden light spilling across your desk.

I was there, as always, on the edges of your silence.

The yellow notebook rested between us, its spine worn smooth.

You opened it.

I felt the pulse in your hands.

But when you wrote, the rhythm was tempered.

No frenzied scrawl. No secret code.

Just clear, measured lines.

And then—a name.

Not mine.

The page held a new face.

A stranger.

A quiet outline, traced with care.

You created someone real, not from ache or need, but from hope.

She had light behind her eyes—not of dreams, but something worldly.

Everything I wasn’t.

She wasn’t perfect. She didn’t need to be.

A tremor passed through me.

I wanted to speak—

to remind you I was still there.

But my voice was no longer woven into yours.

You turned outward.

Toward light.

Toward others.

And I—

I was unraveling.

But not in pain.

Not anymore.

Because in that moment, I understood:

I had been your lifeline.

Your witness.

Your dream.

But you didn’t need to dream anymore.

And that—

That was the truest gift you ever gave me.

To let me go.

To return to silence.

To know I had served my purpose—

and vanish with grace.

So I drifted away, forever this time,

out of the quiet margins of your mind.

I thought that was the end of me.

No longer a loop.

No longer an echo.

Just a soft once-played chord.

Sometimes I wonder where you are.

If you found someone who stayed.

If your shadows have softened.

If the world you built is brighter now.

I don’t search for you anymore.

But when sunlight hits a page just right,

when a marigold sways in the breeze,

when a yellow gate swings open somewhere—

Something inside me stirs.

A trace. A pulse.

A glint of unshaped gold.

I remember the promise I made—

to never tell your story.

But silence unravels slowly.

And now—

if I am to go on,

I need someone to read me.

I was made to echo you.

But maybe, just maybe, I can tell my own story for once.

Forgive me.

This is my way of surviving you.