It's the little bit left in the glass after it's been drained. Whisky, cognac, gin, the stuff that burns away feeling. What warms as it kills.
Its the lace you find in your grandmother's chest she's kept to hold memories of her youth, all moth eaten and stained by the years. Beside it are the love letters sent by the man she loved before your grandfather. They're all tied up in a neat package, carefully hidden from view. He's not important now, but she loved him once, in another life that plays behind her closed eyes with the static of old television sets.
It's the dress the color of sunshine you used to wear to school, you're hair all trussed up into a schoolgirl's braids. It's tucked away somewhere, still bright as brass.
It's the goldfish you won at the fair. How its scales caught the lamplight as it wriggled about in the bowl. That fish faded into insignificance, and no one really remembers when or how it died, but its gone now.
It's the dust motes swirling and jiving in the late afternoon sunlight. When the air is sticky and the roads lazy and red. When dogs lay down to wait for cooler weather, not even bothering to bark and strangers driving by their porches.
It's the funny notes in people voices when they sang, a hundred years ago. It's curiously missing in the music of today, but maybe it is only because not enough time has passed. Like fine wine, the timber hasn't matured to dusky warmth. Perhaps our children's children will hear the songs of our youth and understand us.
When a bouquet of roses wither and droop, it's the hue of what used to be white and pink and speckled with dew. It's the stories told by those waiting for immortality, the touch of fingers roughened with care. They are gentle enough when they pluck photographs from worn albums to present to you, proud as they are of how life used to be, how they survived.
Yellow hurts. It's a peculiar pain that brings happiness in remembering.
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