I’ve had a backyard of my own

essentially my whole life now.

Five flower bushes made of splashes of red and white, 

Four tall trees that seemed to shoot into the heavens when I was a child,

And a landscape of bright green grass, untamed and lengthy,

Flowing in the wind with the grace of waves rolling in the ocean.

The majestic, childlike appeal of my own backyard has faded with time;

Yet my resonation with my grandmother’s backyard has mysteriously never left.

It is dusty and dry, 

With a single orange tree, overgrown, and overinfested with bugs,

That is actually the neighbor's,

And a vivid red fence, 

Surrounding the square yard, contrasting against the blue sky, 

And the bluer trims of the neighbor's home.

While I never fail to hate this place in the sweltering summer days,

The sunsets there are what get me.

 They are what remain so majestic.

The blessing of orange and pink tint spread across the leaves of the orange tree,

The porous surface of the orange,

The faded paint of the fence,

The hopeful blue of the neighbor’s home,

And my own golden skin, and pitch black pupils. 

Everything would melt and evaporate away into the wispy clouds

That danced and spread in the evening sky.

They take what I considered in the day as rundown

And transform them to things of beauty. Things of clarity,

As if they were the result of great cinematography in an indie summer film.

They made the place that I hated,

For all of its chipped paint,

Sketchy passerbys,

Loud neighbors,

And invasive heat,

Into a place where I could just sit and gaze,

Ceasing to think about the future and all of its hypothetical complications,

And just get trapped in the beauty, and the reality of the world that surrounds me.

Something about that image remains endlessly profound,

And always inspiring to me.

Like a whisper as soft as my grandma’s voice,

As soft as the colors splashed above my head,

As soft as the fine dirt beneath my feet,

That would tell me;

Everything will be alright,

And everything is,

 exactly as it should be.