At ten I stood at the top of a wheat- field in Oregon and saw the sunlight saturate the wheat and the sky into a tangible color— it was the color of the bee, crushed under my naked foot, its sting its only claim to afterlife. It was the color of honey and I wanted to walk through those bee-swarm hills into the sun. Into the swoop of summer brilliance, Into the color of emperors and of earth, of gooseberries bursting between the teeth, the color of singing and sitars, the color of diving into endless warmth that smells of afternoon, that smells of grass, slowly bleaching in the heat, that smells of certainty and saffron. Into that color of paper-cut pain and of a violin played to its highest pitch. Into the color of madness. I know now that when I die I want to burst in safflower streaks across an unraveling sky.