It had started with something innocuous, maybe sulphur or sunflower, a definite yellow. She had asked what colour he had used that morning as they stirred coffee granules, her mug pink and chipped. He had examined his flecked knuckle.
As she returned to her manuscript the paint name lodged in her brain. His morning and now early afternoon were custard-coloured, whereas hers seemed stark and clinical. She imagined him inside an egg, yolk-smeared like a baby with pulpy fists of bread. She closed her lap top and returned to the kitchen, where everything yellow vibrated and hummed like inside the fridge. Mustard. She cut a slice of bread. Ochre. She chewed slowly like a cow, which then brought…Buttercup. Marigold. Daffo-the phone rang but she ignored it and reopened the computer. This was how the list began.
It was always with slight guilt that she returned to it each day, she always intended to get some work done, but she was like a woman obsessed by her husband’s lovers. Jealous of the primrose pigment beneath his nails, like pollen in his lungs. Unsure if she wanted him to relate to her with the same passion, or whether she begrudged him the confidence with the colours. It was as if she tamed them when she wrote them. She harnessed their unspeakable power over him in black and white.
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