Rise

And how the air is thick with the scent of lilacs. We walked along the water, in the afternoon sun, the sailboats newly lifted into a sea that glittered so much that it hurt the eye, and I couldn't walk a hundred feet without commenting on how beautiful it all was. Hours later, the night darkened for but an instance, my church looming across the channel, silhouetted against the burgeoning dawn, we walked across the bridge and our feet never tired. By the time I reached my steps, morning light lay gray across the church stones, but the horizon was still on fire. Birds went mad in the crab apple blossoms, no one has time for sleep.

I forget, every year I forget, how magical this moment is. For a few short days, everything lives, everything is mad with hope and reckless abandon, everything is beautiful. Every year I think this is good and do not realize until that morning comes that the rest of the year is but a bleak shadow, a failed copy of what life may truly be. The winter is long, and dark, and terrifying. But it is behind us now. It may never have existed at all.

The sun rises, the apartment is light. My eyes refuse to tire.

I live.