Yellow

        “It's too late,” Madeline said, her blues eyes piercing through the shadows.  “You're too late.”

         John reached for the window pane, tracing his index finger along the cracks that webbed out from the single hole that sat in the center. 

         The yellow flowers dropped from her hand and fell to the floor, into the darkness, amidst the dust and the grime.

         The light of the moon sliced through the naked poplar tree and streamed through the hole in the glass, the speck of light hitting her eyes just right.  He could see the shadows quiver on her face as the tree branches rattled outside.  The mustard color of the walls, walls they had painted together, were muted and seemed stale in this light. 

         John opened his mouth to speak, but instead of words, a low groan escaped his lips.  It did not sound right in the open air, it felt wrong.  Immediately, he bit his tongue and averted her eyes.

         It was hard for him to figure out the day it turned cold and the day the lighted faded from the room and the yellowness of the walls, that staleness, burrowed into their hearts.  All he could do was sit and twiddle his thumbs, thinking about how they had changed.  Madeline used to hum all the time when she concentrated, how every movement she made had elegence, how her eyes danced when the sun poured through the windows.  That was all the past now.  But still, still, why did it have to be different? Why did it have to be now that every sound was dirty and wrong and stale.  Why? Nothing he could say could ever sound good.  His whole body ached because of it. 

         “Why don't you hum anymore?” The words popped out of his mouth like gunshots, it sounded more like an accusation than the plea he had meant it to be. 

         “It's too late,” she said again, her eyes still drilling him with an intensity that made his innards twist and contort.  “You're too late.”

         “Why?”

         Her sharp chin jutted forward slightly, but she did not respond.   

         When his eyes met hers, he startled. 

         The warmth that had filled her eyes, the kindness and passion with which he fell in love, was gone.  What was there now he could not figure it out, it was not absence, there was a fever, a delirium. “I wrote to him yesterday.”

         John felt his heart jump into his throat.  “What?”

         “He is coming home.” Her eyes were burning now.  There was sweat on her brow.

         John glanced at the hole in the window, the moonlight now pouring through it, and then back up at Madeline. 

         “Everything is going to be fine.” There was a tremor in her voice.

         John suddenly felt dizzy.  He felt the room slide. He listed sideways and his hand popped out, his palm hitting the mustard wall to steady himself, but instead, he fell to his knees and began to hyperventilate. 

         “He's coming back!” Her eyes yellowed. “He is coming back.”