1. My hair. Faded, maybe, but yellow all the same. Shaved short enough as to have lost its curl.
I am unrecognizable enough to go home now.
2. Sunflowers growing on a horse’s grave. Reaching for the sky. Tasting it. Devouring his body.
Returning him to part of the earth.
3. Buttercup flowers taking cover among the tall grass. Tiny suns reflecting off the surface of a
sea of green & off the underside of your chin. Deciding whether or not you like butter. Granting
wishes.
4. When the grass dies. Neat columns of cut hay drying in the sun before becoming bales.
Before becoming cow feed. The tractor on fire in the middle of it all. A common occurrence. It’s
farmer stands a good distance away with his coveralls & crossed arms. Waiting for the flames to
die. All while the grass lies in the sun.
5. The yellow marker in my Crayola set gets the least use. There’s a dimness to my drawings.
Perhaps because as a kid I was haunted by darkness. It slept in the next room.
6. Buttercup flowers glued to posts, decorating my ears like two small stars orbiting my face. I
am the gravity that gives them purpose. The wish granter. The oracle.
7. Yellow is the color of happiness. Of joy. The sun.
8. A child’s bath toy floating in a tub of bubbles in the only room she hasn’t been violated.
9. Yellow is the color of caution. Of POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS. Of the flashing lights on a
snow plow like a buoy in an opaque sky. Meaning slow down. Meaning follow me.
10. A clear day’s promise of stars.
11. The self-portrait I painted in 2020. Blindingly yellow with a splatter of an orange center. A
messy compilation of color. A reverent anger immortalized in acrylic paint. To remember.
12. The walls of a house they’ll dream of but never see. Surrounded by purple coneflower,
mullein shoots, brown-eyed susans, white lupine, sunflowers, and milkweed for the monarchs.
Daisies, buttercups, and devil’s paintbrush between them. Home to american ladies and
swallowtails, cardinals and chickadees, crickets and cicadas and bees. Home to house cats and
friends. Home like the feeling. Full of love and joy and light. And yellow.
Poem by Cara Morgan
Cara Morgan is a University of Maine graduate with a BA in English. Their research appears in the spring 2019 issue of the Queen City Writers online academic journal. Their creative works appear in “When Pens Bloom” by Plants & Poetry Journal, For Women Who Roar Magazine, They Call Us Magazine, and forthcoming publication by Flying Ketchup Press. They are a CPTSD and chronic illness sufferer, poetry slam champion, home baker, and cat mom.
Poem links:
https://www.theycallus.com/bossy?pgid=kjmt1k5i1-733ed6f9-e6ac-4ee9-90f2-c052c9e885fa