When it comes to love, thankfully there doesn’t seem to be any “had I known at the time…”

I fell in love with my yellow bedroom almost immediately. It was the first time I got to pick out my own decor. Yellow! Everything was yellow. Carpeting and bedspread. Van Dyke Road shone a little brighter as the reflection jumped from youthful bed to the gravel. I could read at night without a light. It was so bright, but for the stairs, you never would have known I was in the basement. 

Was it even a year? I don’t know how long it was before my father sold the house and my mom and I moved to an apartment. I guess it’s true that perfection knows no time constraints, because even in giving it up, I went on loving it. I still do. And the heart, as broken as it seems, isn’t. It fumbles, yes. Stumbles, sure. But it keeps on loving. 

It’s not even the bathroom really. We have separate little rooms for our toilets. I give them flowers and paintings. Maybe a candle. Why? Because I love them. I wrote once, “this year, let’s love like no lessons have been learned…” — that’s how I decorate the bathrooms, the bedrooms, the kitchen, with flowers and gratitude, and a love that stays as bright and hopeful as a child’s bedroom. 

There are burners that I will no longer touch. And roads that I won’t take. But my heart climbs the stairs, and beats forever yellow.