This Golden Hour

I am sitting in the shade, the willow branches swaying across my field of vision. I am watching you. You are not aware of me. You are in your own world. You are in an elaborate game of your own making and I cannot begin to understand, even with your patient tutoring. I do not try. I am content to watch you.

The sun glints off of your hair, casting golden light about you like a halo. I know this is a trick of the light, for you are not perfect, although you are perfectly human. The sky is so blue that I want to remember this shade forever, but I know that I will not. It is not a color that has a name. It is the color of every perfect summer day that has ever happened. It is the color of swimming and picnics and bike rides. It is the blue of county fairs and cornflowers and predawn summer mists. I try to hang on to it, but I know it will elude me.

You are singing, your feet working back and forth as you steer your horse, your boat, your bike, your spaceship. You do not pay me much mind. You do not ask me to play. You are happy. It is enough for you to glance in my direction every now and again to reassure yourself that I am still there; that you still have my attention.

I am amazed by what you are; by what you have become. I am in awe of the perfect machine of your body, working parts all moving together to do your will. It is small and graceful and lithe.

I think about who I was before you. I think about what my life was before you. I think about all of those days, stretched out and tumbled together, and how each and every one of them led me to you. I know it was no accident.

You are me and I am you and we cannot be separated. We share things. We know each other in a way that no one else on this earth can know of us. I hug this secret part of us to myself and I am content.

This day will go and you will not remember it. It will become one day in a string of days, in a chain of years for you. But for me, this day will stay. It will become a part of who I am. This day will wait, coming out from time to time, unwinding and unraveling, reminding me of you, and of me. Reminding me of what my life was when you were with me. Reminding me of what you made of me, this day, this golden hour.