I awake to the quiet electronic beeping interrupting a dream. I gaze down and look at my watch. The sun captures the cracked line under the teal band where my tan skin stops. I rise and stumble into a big T-shirt, the shoulder drooping low, my dad’s. I step onto the cool grass, soft beneath me. Our bare feet on the ground run, our soles feeling purpose. We sit on jagged logs all together. Jackson makes the eggs over a small fire and we joke that they will burn quickly if he is the one making them.
We barely ask to dip into the water, submerge into the cool rushing over us, making us feel alive. Further and further we go, until our calloused soles can’t feel the mud at the bottom any longer. We stroke gracefully, a misfit family of swans all in unison toward a horizon. I look back and see the smiles ashore.
People say you remember moments, not days. You remember the time your parents sat you on the linoleum to tell you about how you won’t see Theresa anymore, she has gone to a better place, but you were too young to even understand what that meant. You remember the terror in a cracked voice over the static when something happened that shouldn’t have. You remember the sadness in your friend’s eyes as she told you she didn’t feel she knew herself anymore. You remember the falls, the scares, the tears. But with these moments of pain that shape us, do we forget those times that provide us with hope? How else will we keep going if we lose sight of the beauty that cracks through our misshapen glass?
If we look for the light, if we grasp it and hold onto it when it comes, maybe, just maybe, things will be all right after all.
I hear the beeping again. I sit up, the big T-shirt still drooping, a frigid air seeping through, and a gleaming white covers the near rooftops. I blink awake, and find myself smiling: holding onto a moment that keeps me warm through the cold.