Instead

So I wanted to write about pain. And how there’s a ton of it.

But then I decided to write about beauty.

Last night my three roommates and I decided to put on fake butterfly tattoos for the first day of school, which was today. Lori adorned her neck, Lindsey her ankle, Caelan her wrist, and I…well…

After dinner Caelan and I went on a chocolate and fruit date. We shared broken life and Chinese apple pears and hurt and hearts, and then we laughed and laughed and laughed. We couldn’t stop laughing until we got home, and then we laughed more.

This morning I went on a run in the cold. I passed a street intersection with a cardboard box in the middle, fireworks exploding out of it.

A little orange sits on the desk next to my fingers as I type. It is the last one in the sack. Caelan and I kept giving it back and forth to each other, maybe because the joy of giving surpasses the joy of eating.

And a memory: On my last day in Doha, I sat at the table and watched Craig and Gifford play Guess Who. Only, they played with psychological questions like, “Does your person have a secret?” and “Does your person believe in orthodontia?” I sat there and watched them and tried to absorb the beauty of that moment into my body, but I couldn’t. I saw it as if through a window on a train. It was there for a little while, and then it went.

Maybe beautiful moments like these happen all the time, every day, and they can be found in cardboard boxes or empty orange sacks or fake butterfly tattoos. Sure, pain is there. Darkness is there. You never have to look for that sort of thing.

But as for me, I’ll keep writing about beauty.