Good Days

I feel that there are two kinds of Good Days.

The first kind is strictly aesthetic. The sun is shining in the sky, the morning dew glistens on the autumn leaves, it is a brisk, yet refreshing temperature outside, with perhaps the barest kiss of a breeze. Good music keeps playing on the radio, your windows are open just a crack, and the birds are singing in the trees. People have been nice to you almost all day, and anyone that hasn't been has been dwarfed by the lovliness of the day itself.

I like to call those, "I F*cking love my life" days.

The second kind of Good Day is triggered by awesome events or wonderful news. Where the sky might not be brightly shining, and the breeze may be a bit stronger then you prefer, but the news just makes everything that much more glimmering with the light of inescapable optimism.

For example:

This morning, the chef surprised me with pancakes. And I discovered that our manager won't just let us dress up for Halloween - she encourages us to!

It is going to be a damn fine day.

Infinite

Today the sun is shining. Wisps of cloud dot across the sky, but only their pale greys and whites interrupt the expanse of blue. I like it.

The sun warms where a chilly autumn wind kisses and pulls the color from your hair and singes it delicately on the bridge of your nose. The smell of crisp leaves and the approaching bite of frost tickles your senses as you crunch through the fresh cut grass across the lawn.

You imagine all of this as you stand behind a desk. Gazing at the sky through panes of thick glass. Happy, fun music plays on the radios and it makes you smile. Your back hurts, and your legs are sore, and your hip keeps popping funny and your tailbone cracked this morning - but you have things to look forward to. so you stick it out. After all, you only have three and a half hours left until your freedom becons to you!

And then you will see his sarcastic smirk, or his devilish grin, or even the broad smile of a full throated evil little laugh. And that in turn - will make you smile. Your back pains will be soothingly rubbed away, the fact that your body cracks in funny ways will be a funny conversation starter, and you can recline to rest your sore legs next to him as you watch a movie.

-Oru

Heart on a String

The words were very hard to say.

They burned in my chest like fiery coals, whispering in my ear with their comforting warmth, but still I held onto the ice around me, ignoring the frostbite digging beneath my fingernails. I tried not to listen, convincing myself that it was all a lie, that nothing this beautiful could happen, nothing this wonderful is real. After all, hadn't everything else been a facade over something far less wonderful?

SO I dangled there. Wrapped in my snowy cloak, flakes of crystal perched on my eyebrows and eyelashes, hair frozen into segments, tinkling over my shoulders and behind my ears. I felt the embers burning at my throat, beneath the heart with a hole, and wondered if it would ever heal over and recover.

And a fascinating thing happened. As I tried so desperately to avoid it, to get it out of my mind - Unbeknownst to me, I began to melt. The embers wormed their way through my bloodstream, thawing out the veins and arteries like good little soldiers. The heart with a hole shrank and siezed, compacted and coalesced into a real heart. A whole heart. My heart.

Something I thought had long since been broken without hope.

And when I realized that I was no longer looking through life through an iced pane of glass - when I knew that what I was seeing wasn't tinted glass or an illusion, the last thing to melt was the frown on my face, and muscles that hadn't worked honestly in a while began to morph into a grin. And then I felt the thunder of powerful wings beneath my ribs, pounding away in a way I had actually forgottne. In such a space of time that can be seen as disgraceful, I had forgotten what the beating of my own heart should sound like.

SO I let go. I dropped my frigid veil, and it fell from my shoulders like winter makes way for spring. And I held out my arms with words pressed to my lips like my Lover's kiss, and I let the warmth take me over at last, pull me out of my damaged shell and into a new one. Made of stronger stuff, forged in fires, cooled in spring water and wielded like a blade made for truth.

And as I embraced him, as I pulled him down to kiss me, and the skies above cleared for just a moment, the moon shining down on us like an approving Diety, realizing his machinations had come to fruition, I spoke the words with every ounce of myself. They flowed as naturally as breath and he breathed them in, and his smile was like the summer sun.

So I said it again. And I will say it as long as his face brings me warmth and his smile brings me joy. I will say it as long as I long to make him happy and see him so. For he is the sun and I am the Earth - and he will never cease to warm even the most distant parts of me.

-Oru.