THESE FOUR

My friend who owns a condo saw the yellow walls
in the room I rent through my laptop camera and
asked, "Are you committed to that color?" It is a mild
yellow that reminds me of rabbit piss. This question
paws at other maybe commitments: to metaphor, the
madhouse, the bit? I first read “The Yellow Wallpaper”
standing in the front of a classroom, pretending to
proctor exams. It was a good time for the grifters
when I was asked to surveil, unable to care about
integrity in a school remodeled from a Microsoft
building, where I learned more about structural
inequality and all that than the kids did in those
julienned days. Like them, I just wanted to shift
a classic story into the past perfect and remember
little. It's too bad. Italic words unfurled over a
too-orange sunset have told me that the answers
to humanity’s gilded questions lie in literature, but
at least, there’s no arsenic in my walls.

Yvonne Lin is a grad student who lives in California and lurks on Twitter @__yvonnelin.