‘How are you feeling, princess?’ Your voice brushes past my ears with a certain ease I always admired. You have the ability to make even the gravest questions sound so awfully casual… Or maybe there’s just a soothing familiarity to everything that you do that makes it all okay.
You crack into a gentle smile as you look at me. Sometimes I wonder if you noticed how your face matured throughout the years. How the green of your eyes got brazed with golden dots, how your cheekbones got slightly more angular, how your smile got wider, more radiant. You look more handsome and laid-back than ever.
‘I’m happy. Happier than I remember being in years.’ I just smile back at you lazily, tilting my head slightly as I watch the first rays of morning sun touch the surface of the lake behind you. ‘I can’t really explain it. It’s not like everything’s got solved or the issues I had just went away… No, I’ve just… I’ve just moved past them, I guess. For months it was all about suffering and purging and getting the venom out of my system, and now it is… just gone. All the sorrow and the grief. It’s all gone.’
Something lights up deep within your eyes as your smile gets wider than ever. ‘So what now, little miss sunshine?’
‘Now, huh? Now we just sit and watch the sun come up. It’s a nice moment. Let’s not waste it.’
‘Waste it? On what?’
‘On anything. Let’s just enjoy this feeling as long as it lasts. However long it might last. ‘Coz this is the only time we get to feel like this. Life moves forward and forward only. Relish in it.’
Your laughter chimes through the air with the ease of light beams glimmering upon the undisturbed surface of the lake. That moment, you look happier than I’ve ever seen you.
‘It’s all gonna be just fine.’
JBV