Perfect Moments

...when I am very tired, and I can lay my head down on the desk, and not care, and I hear the professor's voice but I don't listen, and Amy Leigh strokes my back with hands that feel soft through my shirt, while all the noise and disorganization inside my head slows down until it is only quiet, and my muscles unclench and my eyes relax, and soon the only thing that matters is my breathing, and the quiet, reassuring pressure of Amy Leigh's hand...

...when my life is in unorganized piles all around me and responsibility glares so angrily that I can't look it in the face, and I make a hot cup of tea, wrap up in a fleece blanket--gray, the color of quiet--and read a book I've read at least eight times before and can almost read it in the dark, not needing to see the words to know what they say; a book about dragons, and princesses, and a magic sword, and nothing at all about term papers, or hospitals, or money, or deadlines, or childhood horrors--a book where the characters are witty and colorful and the adventures perilous, yet certain of success, a book that closes out the piles and the glares until, when it is finished, the piles are tired of leaning threateningly, and the glare has softened into a gentle, bleary-eyed reminder...

...when my mom holds my head in her lap and lets me cry, until all my tears leave me feeling hollow, and in their place comes an earned peace, and neither of us says anything, until we both laugh...

...when stress and fatigue leave me feeling poetic, and I look at everything through the haze of one who is not really part of the world...