Light
I listen to the creak and shift of him downstairs at the dining room table. His pencils make a soft, woody sound as they are raised and lowered in turn. He is drawing a mouse. He is drawing it very carefully. The air is silent and thick with his concentration; I can feel it all the way up here. Upstairs, where I sit, the cat rolls around on the bed, purring loudly, offering up a winter-thick tummy.
I let myself enjoy each thing in turn. Every time I do, I feel like I have stolen something back from a place dark and forbidden, as if all goodness had been bulldozed into a great hoarded pile, behind gates and crossed arms. To smile makes me feel like a pirate at night, like a candle.
The longer I live, the more I realise that joy is really just a matter of expanding. It is simply a matter of drawing more and more to you; inviting more and more closer.
Joy becomes a flame, then. And you become a flame, too.