in which ‘you’ is me, but maybe also you
Life glows, if you squint at it.
So you do. You spend most of your life learning which way to tilt your head, how far to lean back, rocking on your heels.
You spend so much time with your eyes half-closed, staring at the hazy orange-gold-red of the sky beneath the slope of your eyelids.
You spend your life with your eyes half-closed because you're afraid of what it will look like when you open them.
Until one day, without really meaning to, you wake up with your eyes wide open, and the room is lit by sunlight that filters through the branches of the old tree outside the window.
The room is glowing. Life is glowing.
Had it always looked like this? you wonder, and, if not, you wonder when it changed.
You wonder about all the time you spent trying to make things beautiful when they already were. You wonder about the version of yourself that had to try so hard to see it.
You mourn for them, for the things they will never see.
You cry silent tears that are only for yourself, and you do not know where the sadness comes from, but you feel that it is mixed with joy, and that is what you cry for. You cry for what you can feel, and for the times that you could not feel it.
You cry in triumph, and the whole damn room is glowing.