The single millisecond before an embrace from a loved one,
before I know how tight it will be,
how much I will miss it when it leaves, never to be felt in the same way,
or how much it will mean is my favorite moment.
The second?
The last line of a good poem,
the pound my heart makes before it realizes the other rhythm has stopped,
the emotion lost, never to be felt in the same way because I know how the end feels already, so why do I reread the same poem over and over?
Because that feeling is different but it always feels like sorrow, like a bird fleeting when I take one step to close in the parking lot as it hurries to try and pick up the french fry a kid threw down just a few minutes ago,
like the end of a Christmas movie you've watched every year with your parents,
dreading the moment it ends because you know you'll have to wait awhile before you can see it again,
like leaving school for summer and not knowing how much you'll miss that freshman year of high school, only knowing that you can never go back to the same feeling you had before you left,
like a hug that can never be felt again, a poem can never end again because it lives on when you read it twice,
But you still did because you knew that if you read it again then you would remember it, feel it, and live it more if you just reread those same words one more time.
I spend an entire hug waiting for it to start over, and an entire poem waiting for the end when my mind lingers, solving the puzzles of the poem like a wannabe Sherlock Holmes, waiting for the next crime to occur so it too can be solved like every one before that.
My third favorite moment in life is driving down a familiar road and realizing that the world really is beautiful,
It may kill the good, and keep the bad around for another day waiting for karma to finally take some initiative, probably, at least I'd like to think, but even though it kills innocence and wrecks kindness,
it receives forgiveness.
Maybe the trees are still lush,
the grass still green, poking above the cruel frost that will soon blanket over and suffocate as the blizzard moves onward to terrorize another suburb,
the sky still a blue that even the best painter will never be able to figure out.
I write to beat out the painter,
I can describe the color of the sky,
it's timid but outgoing, repulsive with it's tease when it looks sunny and warm from where I'm sitting beside a window but if I dare to venture outside I would need five layers of clothes.
Writing begs me to ask,
why are so many awful things beautiful from afar?
the glaciers, the yoga, oh how it burns!
The sun in its fiery blaze keeps us warm and in orbit,
but look at the wrinkles on that woman, and the lobster colored arms on that little boy, oh how it burns!
My last favorite moment has only occurred once, and only needed to,
the moment I fell in love with words I changed,
They are better portals to the soul than the eyes could ever be,
we're physically connected by concrete pathways but emotionally and mentally by words,
I write to utilize these connections,
express myself with utmost detail,
and prove to the world that even though I look like any other human being,
there is something unique in everyone,
a spark that only the person it belongs to can find,
and that spark lights every connection this world possesses whether it be mistakenly beautiful,
a single millisecond before a physical connection with emotional presence,
or tell them how to end the only thing they ever start just so they can feel how the end changes when they read it over and over again.