alive ; sunshine

I believe I am more alive in certain moments

than in others, like when I get a headache

and my temples throb under my forehead

and I have to press my fingers against them

I feel alive, or when the prickle of leg hair

feels coarse and noticeable as I smooth

a hand down my shin, or when the clock

strikes twelve p.m. on the dot—I feel here

more than I did before, then, in these

moments, when I’m on the last page of

a book I’ve been reading for weeks, or when

I reach the final song on an album, or when

the final sip of water in my bottle is sent

down; I feel rooted to this earth in its

littlest moments, under the dull glow of the

lamplight at night, peering out from my attic

window, feeling the wind against my face;

I feel alive in the autumn, in the winter too,

and duller in the summer, and the spring

that drags it along—I feel aware of the

water, the ocean that has always called my

name, but the distance between myself and

outer space feels like a world’s worth of

space and time, like I could stretch my arm

out from now until the end of my life and still

not even close half the distance between

myself and the sky with all the range that I accumulated over that time

a life’s worth of work, of stretching, of reaching, of trying;

sometimes I grow tired of trying, and I allow

myself to just live, just breathe, just be, and

with the effort put into being effortless, I feel

more alive than I have in a very long time;

is laziness the word?

I deem it whimsy, the absentmindedness of slow, seamless living;

I burrow my face into my pillow and breathe

in the scents of my dreams, as if laying flat

and still and motionless might dull the

whirring of my mind, might provide a

solution to the solutionless, but there are

some paths that hold no answers, and we

must traverse them all the same; when I get

up, and I remove my head from my pillow,

that is what I do—I traverse into my world;

I walk around my house with bare feet and

I make coffee at my Keurig; the smell and

sound of it gives me comfort as I move into

other planes of existence in the meantime,

waiting for my cup to be filled, filled to the

brim with the sweet, sharp bitterness, as

music blares in my ears, as ideas flash

before my eyes, and I see the sun outside

beaming as always, filling my home, filling

our world with its brightness, and I smile

because I feel alive now more than ever