From out the window of my apartment, I can see the sky’s sick aura, yellowing like the eyes of my uncle. When I had my aura read in Salem, I paid fifty dollars for them to tell me about mine. The woman told me to protect my energy then and said the blue meant I had a naïve heart. There was something funny about that to me. Like she was calling me a fool for paying her; but, then again, maybe that did mean I was naïve. She maybe had a point.
Yellow was supposed to mean freedom, I think. The google results vary a lot, but that seems to be what most google image charts say. Youthful, energetic, free. It didn’t seem right now, not with the way the pines were swaying. There were other trees too, but they were only the thin tracings of trunks now in February. Only the evergreen trees held their same ground in the sky, even as they did shed some of their needles loose in the gale.
“Are you still there?” I shift the phone from one ear to another. There’s no reason to do this now. It’s not like how it used to be with your home phone pressed between chin and shoulder, twirling the cord around and around until your fingers lose circulation. You’re on speakerphone, but I want to draw you near in any way I can in the dark of my room. The power blew out hours ago, and the candle I lit is throwing shadows on all it cannot reach.
“Yeah,” you sigh. “I am.”
“Oh, okay.” I shift my legs around in my bedsheets. It should be colder out for a February night, but a warm front is moving in, pressing in upon the shape of winter. Leaving a hole. “I wasn’t sure if we lost the connection there, for a second.”
“No. I’m still here.”
“Oh,” I answer. “Oh, okay.”
I feel my insides yellowing. too. Like the winter wind is blowing through me as I catch my breath, like it’s playing my ribs like wind chimes. The new medication has stopped the feeling from hanging over me, but it hasn’t stopped it from opening up inside of me. I don’t know if anything ever could stop it or if it would be right to even try.
You exhale loudly, like you want me to hear it. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong.” There are some things wrong. The power being out, for one. Or the winter storm. The uncanny swelter of the radiators still blasting on a warm day when it shouldn’t be warm. I have my window raised halfway, to let the heat out and to feel the wind come in. It’s a perverse need of mine: to feel the world move, even when it’s moving wrong.
“Just tell me what’s wrong.” You’re in your apartment across the city from me. The same reflective glass casing of each building on your block might catch this yellowing in its prism, like the birthstone for November. Citrine is meant to hold healing properties, but it has always looked like calcified soft tissue to me. Like a cyst burst and hardened.
“Are you mad at me?”
“No, I’m not mad at you.”
“Okay,” I flinch at your words, at the coldness I feel in your voice. “Okay.”
“What?”
“I just feel like you’re mad at me.”
We didn’t talk much earlier today, when everyone was busy preparing for the storm. I texted you to fill up your bathtub with water so that you could still do things like wash dishes or flush your toilet. In case things were to linger. You texted me a picture of the grocery aisles, where all the known brands of water were already gone. No more Poland Spring or Smart Water. Only niche creeks and stream names left. Water from mountain tops that tasted pretty much the same but cost more.
“I’m not mad at you.”
“I wish you were here.”
When people talk about storms, the wind is always howling. That’s not right though, not right now. It’s not wailing, it’s whispering. The wind circles around in a language all its own, and I feel like I’m catching parts of conversations I can’t make out. And when the rain starts up, it’s like the wind is trying but can’t find a place to hide from it. That’s why it’s blowing in on me, raising goosebumps down my arms before I pull my cover up to my neck. I don’t want to close it, though. I need to feel it.
You hate it when I do that. Is that why you stayed there, for tonight? To avoid the feeling, the rain on your forehead?
“I am here.”
“No, here. I wish you were here.”
When you don’t answer, I feel the whispering grow inside of me, too.
“Please, just tell me.”
“What?”
“I know you’re mad at me. I can feel it. Please.” I’m pleading now, and I think we’re both embarrassed.
“You don’t let me get mad at you.”
“What? What do you mean?”
A gust of wind blows out my candle. The warm perfume is covered over by the smell of the wick and of the smoke it seeps out. It’s darker now, in my room. The yellow sky is darker, too. Normally when I look outside at night, I can see the lights of all other rooms in all other apartments all lit up. I can’t see inside them, to the people in their glow, just the lights. But it’s enough to know I’m not alone. But there are no lights now. I can’t see the rain either, but it’s there.
“Your anxiety just grows and grows, and it’s like there’s just no room left for me.”
“Please. Please, just tell me.”
“You’re not hearing me. I am telling you.”
“I wish I was there. I wish I was there with you.”
You’re sighing again, and it’s all welling up inside me. You do want me to hear it, I can tell. I can read you in those small ways, but not in others.
“What is it? What did I do? I’m sorry.” My nose is running wet snot down my face, and I’m snorting to keep it all in. “Please, don’t me upset with me. I know you are. I can feel it. Please, just tell me. I’m so afraid you’re mad at me.” The rain comes in on a slant to coat my tears. It’s all mixed up now.
“You’re not listening. It’s always about you being afraid that I’m upset with you, and it’s never about me being upset with you. Don’t you see that?”
“You are? You’re upset with me?”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay.” It’s not okay. I know it. I know you know it.
“Are you upset with me for being anxious?”
“No.”
“I’m so sorry.” It comes out as a whine and a whimper.
“It’s okay.” You’re just saying that. “It’s just,” you trail off.
“What?”
“You think being anxious about something means it’s not also true. But it can be.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Like you act like your being anxious that I’m upset with you means I can’t also be upset with you. But I can be. It’s just not fair.”
“I am so, so sorry.”
“It’s okay.
We’re both quiet, now. Or, at least, not talking. I can still hear you breathe, and you can still hear me cry. I think I want you to hear it at first, but that feels wrong. But when I try to hold it in, you can still tell by the choking sounds in my throat as I try to swallow it all down.
“I wish I was there, with you.”
“I know.”
I’m trying to do my grounding exercise now. Five things you can see, four things you can touch, three you can hear, two smell, and one taste. I’ve only ever gone to therapy for a few weeks once, and it wasn’t really for me. My insurance would only cover the cognitive behavioral kind where they teach you tips and tricks for shaking things off. It’s not all that helpful when the things you’re worried about are real or follow you, but I don’t know what else to do. I’ve been pulling the death card a lot too, when I read my tarot. Death doesn’t just mean death, though. It means change, endings, and rebirth. And when you pull the card upside down, that means you’re fighting it.
The yellowing sky had grown sicker and fallen dark long before, so I can’t see that now. Instead, I can see a hazy gray settling down on everything, the dark outlines of swaying things outside shifting like a Rorschach test, beads of rain pearling on the screen, the flashing sirens of a firetruck streaking by, and, when my phone screen lights up my face, my haunted reflection floating in the windowpane.
I can feel the phone slip past my shoulder and onto the bed, my thin sheets cocooning me like a mummy for burial, my heart— still alive— ricocheting around my chest inside of me, and the winter storm kiss my skin with a drunken abandon. I try not to think about all the things the water carries.
I hear the wind still whisper, the sound of my own crying as if I was watching myself from the outside, and the silence growing between us.
I smell the lingering smoke of my candle and the wet earth, turning over below. I bet you can’t smell either. You’re closed off to experiencing the world like this.
And I taste the battery acid open up inside my cheek from where I bite down.
We’ll wake to assess the damage tomorrow from what remains of today. There will be branches down, maybe whole trees. When they fall, you can hear it even if you can’t see it. There will be neighbors outside, walking around and assessing the damage. They don’t feel like neighbors though, not in a city. Not even in a city as small as this. I’ll walk around too to watch their reactions. That’s how I’ll know how if it’s serious, by the furrowed brows on men I imagine as others’ fathers. But I’ll try to keep a neutral expression on my face in case anyone looks to me with the same questions. I won’t know anything myself.
And, then, there will be you. Maybe you’ll call me, or maybe I’ll call you. We’ll meet somewhere in the middle, in the wake of it. I’ll look for answers on your face and in your voice.
The sky won’t be yellow anymore. It’ll be a blooming pink at dusk. When the sunsets are more vivid, that means more dust and debris has been kicked up into the air where the sun tries to shine through. There was once a volcano eruption that cast a shadow over the world for a year, “The Year Without a Summer.” All the paintings of sunsets from that time are beautiful, if you don’t know why. If the sunset is that same scary beautiful tomorrow, I’ll take pictures with my phone and I’ll keep them long enough to forget the context. Long enough to only see the beauty in the red.
