something beautiful

My favorite color is the morning. I see it in the morning in my room. I can’t help but smile when I know it is there before I open my eyes. When I see it, it is like the loveliest sounds to wake up to. I wake up to my favorite color glistening off the walls of jungle green, over forest green carpet and green garland that surrounds my room. I fall in love all over again. I have surrounded myself with colors over the year, bold and shocking, until I find myself in love with gray, and they all become gray.
Gray was for every other day, but there were days when I would wake up and the color of happiness would peek in through the reflection of morning sunshine off of the house of the next-door neighbor and peel onto my walls in soft light.
All the shelves of fairies and unicorns next to pirates and samurai next to vampires, masks and cherubs return to little girl dreams not yet drifted away. The color returns and morning happens.
The blur of my eyes in the morning fades and I look up from the most comfortable bed and see a cascade of color falling from the ceiling where the plastic stars have faded. I see the dust shake in the light fall. I see pale shadows hiding behind figurines. I see the stuffed animals smile because we both had dreams. I see the light continue its journey along much loved walls where calendars welcome the next day. Shadows of hanging roses dance with their dusty partner over a cluttered dresser where memories mask the surface in pictures of friends.
Such is my favorite color that I see it fall over everything in my room. I turn to my side and I watch the light play on my boyfriend’s skin. I could hear music in the morning and see it in the light that has entered like a spirit that hovers over the place and makes the morning magic. It is as if I am the only one that sees it and I wonder why he doesn’t wake up. I wonder why he doesn’t notice how beautiful it all is.
The shades of light come in like dust. It is this small and delicate spider web of light caressing all it touches. It touches the desk and the lamp; it touches posters on the walls as it touches Japanese souvenirs. It touches the bible and the clock. It touches me and I watch it all around me.
It falls on his exposed shoulders and I want to touch what is not truly visible. I touch only his skin and the pale shadow of my hands dance with warmth upon his back. I let my hand touch the length of his arm. I push myself up to reach his hand on the other side of his body. I touch it. I block the light of the window and it is darker where he faces. He hasn’t seen the morning like I have.
I touch his lips with my finger. I touch his cheek. There is a scruffy shadow on his cheeks and chin. He warms to the morning that I bring him, but he doesn’t open his eyes yet. He sighs and puts his arm around me then turns to hold me. He faces the morning, but his eyes have not opened and he doesn’t see what I see.
I’m in a warm trap where I am on my back and I see the ceiling and all the light that embraces my room. Everything is warm.
This whole morning is so lovely! Why doesn’t he wake up!
I push myself up and his head lies on my chest and his arms wrap around my waist. I lean back and I sit. The light drips on his arm and he pushes his face into the folds of my arms as if to hide from the day. Light falls on short light brown hair. He says it isn’t blonde. I could make out the special freckles that dot his arm and the angel hair on his arms.
He seemed to linger to the dark side of the night before, pulling away from the light of the morning. He skin was lighter than mine, but darker than the morning. He clung to the sleep that was still dark in his eyes.
I didn’t understand that morning wasn’t his favorite color. I gave up. I had my morning masterpiece, now I had the rest of a lazy Sunday to do with as I wished. I also realized that maybe his favorite color was the dark beneath his eyelids, the shade of sleep not yet shaken in the warmth of blankets and me next to him. He didn’t want to let go of the blankets or me, and he didn’t want to open his eyes.