It Was a Yellow Light Sarah Audsley (bio) Keywords Sarah Audsley, poetry Early mornings, I waited for the school bus, tiny hands claspingthin backpack straps, lunch inside a crinkled brown paper bag, tacky white fluff & peanut butter stuck to the cheap Ziploc. The bus arrivedat 7:05 a.m. The yellow morning light was a warm puddle—soft, I could touch it. On the braided carpet, the dog's fur poked through. At 7:01 a.m.,a minuscule wave would ripple in the floorboards, the grainy wood shifting, and then I dropped into myself. A vortex. Swirling. My mouthflapping open, swallowing air for safety from the yellow orb moving up through my feet. 7:02 a.m. The dog barks. I want to grab his tail, pullon it—I think: I am here. Hold on to the doorknob. Don't turn it. A sucking sound like cupping a seashell to the ear, roiling ocean hitting my eardrums.The carpet wobbled and spun, faster and faster. The furniture grew legs and started to walk towards me; the television a brilliant red light, flashinglike a disco ball swinging or the iridescent scales of a caught fish; the lamps flickering, and I am the center of my own vortex, trudging cinderblocklegs, through water, every water. I swear it. I tried to tread above the clock's secondhand poised to tick another millimeter. 7:03 a.m.Two more minutes until the bus arrived. Two more minutes until getting on. Two more minutes until I am born. Yes, I was the cell dividing, touching the shore,turning into frothy foam floating out toward the moon's rippling reflection. No. [End Page 814] I was the roar of all that liquid filling the depths of a woman's womb. No, I wasn'tthere yet. Not inside. I was the breeze brushing against her cheek in the lush field. Grass swaying. Until two minutes. Bees—in my mouth, muffling the sound, no,the song I was trying to sing. The clock's secondhand advanced, gears turned. Everything would shift until each molecule found its place. 7:05 a.m.The carpet slides over the wide chasm. There is no water left. I board the bus. [End Page 815] Sarah Audsley sarah audsley, a Korean adoptee, lives and writes in New Hampshire's White Mountains region. She is a candidate in the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. Her nonfiction has appeared in Appalachia Journal and Alpinist magazine, and her poetry has appeared in Four Way Review and Potluck Magazine. Copyright © 2018 The Massachusetts Review, Inc.