18

I report from the front lines of the battle taking place in my upper chest cavity that the battle is over. Negotiations were under weigh late last night into the early hours of this morning and all sides have come to an agreement. Concessions were made on all sides and for the first time in history, there had been no casualties.

And so I slip easily into this mellifluously flowing stream of new-found feeling, floating lazily downstream without a care to my name. My fishing pole has retired to my side while I let the sun illuminate the capillaries in my eyelids - a network of tiny vessels bringing the pulsating warmth from my heart to farthest corners of my body. The days of cinnamon and burnt orange still so far off, I have reached the zenith of summer vacation - the very moment that defines the season, that lasts in our memory and within the heart and warms our frostbitten fingers when we shove our hands into our coats after surviving a blizzard. The wet air cut through by a warm breeze, the sticky smell of heat, the drops of sweat beading along the edges of the face, the laughter, the starry nights and the constellations of lightning bugs along the black backdrop of a forest at night. A photographic memory would romanticize these scenes with light vignetting, lens flair, film grain and color-crossed processing to provide a vintage haze in pink and yellow hues. The soundtrack would be something slow, something sweet that kept in time with the rocking of a hammock. These are the easy days that we keep in place of those days when the sun scorches the earth and the cul de sac is abandoned for air conditioning.
But this analogy has run on too long.

I can see things in poetry again, read the most innocuous detail for its beauty and allegory. And maybe this moment of relaxation, of acquiescence, of inhibition will be as brief as the explosion of paranoia, of fear and of anxiety had been... but what of it? And perhaps I am romanticizing, glazing over reality with the dreamy melodies provided by Zero 7 and Air that launch me back to a time that has never existed but I have been looking for this whole time; nostalgia my only true yet dearly beloved malady. You feel as though you are endlessly falling through pink clouds. And perhaps this sounds silly and naive, maybe it even is... but what of it? Need everything be so serious, so controlled, so logical? Need everything be grown-up and utilitarian; cold, factory-made and rational? And perhaps I'll feel differently later, sooner... whenever, if ever ... and perhaps I will look back at this as I did my diaries that I hid under my mattress: embarrassed at my vain attempts at eloquent expression in order to sound romantic, intelligent, and dare I say it, witty. But for a moment I was happy, a luxury few have and even fewer relish in when they recognize it. So I pray that I look back on this and giggle at my carelessness because for this one moment in time, I was happy and I lived my life not according to what anyone told me to do but how things simply worked out.

Life is remarkably simple sometimes. It does what it does and has this way of working out, even when it seems like it doesn't. Of course this sounds incredibly trite and cliché... because it is... but romantic comedies and romances do not warm our hearts for nothing. I realize that my cynicism is a clever ruse to distract both others as well as myself that, at heart, I am a romantic. But for this one moment I can truly appreciate that resistance is futile and ride the crest of this tidal wave.