Everyone Is Happy
By Ari Eastman
everyone is happy and waking up at 9 am without an alarm clock. the shower warms up almost immediately. never burns, though. just soothes. any residual ache from the night before or the week before or the year before is washed away and you emerge refreshed. by all meanings. everyone is happy and there’s the exact right amount of groceries and you remember a recipe you saved online that would fit perfectly with the ingredients on hand. you drink one cup of coffee and it’s black without sugar but tastes like all the right people who ever kissed you. perks you up enough, but not too much. not so much that you’d deflate without it. you watch one episode of Love and stop Netflix before going onto the next one. you have things to do. one episode is good. you take a walk down a street you’ve never seen and every house is a museum of humanity. there’s a little kid playing on a swing set and sometimes she kicks her feet so high, you’re sure she’s going to take off like a rocket ship. she can fly. you believe it. they all can. you sit down at a coffee shop and three men smile at you but it isn’t threatening. it isn’t unwanted. it’s kind and welcoming and one of them looks like a combination of all your celebrity crushes. you put headphones in and no one disturbs you. sad songs play but you still aren’t sad. sad songs play and you understand them the way you understand days like today are temporary and so is everything. but everyone is happy and your belly is full of goat cheese and spinach. two girls are taking Snapchats and you wonder which filter they’ll use. you want to tell them how beautiful friendship is. but you figure they already know that. there’s love in this place and in this heart and everyone is happy.
you don’t want to forget that.