Things That Make Life Worth Everything

Chicken salad, wolfed down with a plastic spoon; those brief cherished moments, like a hummingbird’s beat or heaven appearing on a hot afternoon as twin glacial oceans that dance like evenstars and a smile that cracks stony doldrums and quakes ragged knees. Happiness, flowing like the endless golden rivers from the top of her head into the bottom of my heart. As we walk and she talks and trips on invisible wires the sun shoots a picture of her drawn ire: single, deliciously dangerous, raised, angry blonde eyebrow. Laughter, worth infinitely more than a thousand breakfast bagels. Hers is a hyena cackle, half infectious half madness, behind the wheel of a speed thirsty 4x4 neighborhood threat, a wild, invincible, lethal flame of life with the sense of humor and vicious wit to wound with delight. Overkindness, to the brutes whose world Has known far too few of her type. A ruthless padiddler, a queen of low drama, quick to forgive and unforgettable in all, as she with Tolkien’s art and every line Peter Jackson even dreamed of. Éclairs lack her sweetness, and angels lack her heart. Her peers, her sense of style and taste, her future, any boundaries real or imagined. Not books, not success, not anything should she lack, for in her friendship I have found that in my life I have lacked for nothing.