Right now my heart feels full.

There is a bruise on my knee from falling when my toe pick caught on the ice. My fingers are cracking and my face peeling from the dry winter windchill.

Selling off our stuff to raise cash. Trading the ping pong table for a night at the roller derby. Running into coworkers, friends, and my hairdresser in the beer garden.

Looking in the mirror and feeling as though I'm getting better with age.

Discovering a gentle, steady muse at work. Feeling a flicker from my heart, that my heart is still alive, and that there is room to secretly love a little on the side, in my mind. To study his various plaids, to keep a Post It note that he wrote to me, to learn the way that he writes the letter 'm'.

Driving out to the airport, dry granular snow swirling low on the asphalt. Plumes of steam billowing from the mills and settling back down over town. Pale slender grasses stand proud of the snow, seedpods hanging at awkward angles. Foxes in the field, ears forward, backs arched, searching for small life beneath the snow.

As the days grow longer, my heart expands.

In the beer garden, I pass Kaela a hefty bar of soap from my pocket and her eyes light up. She opens the wax paper and presses her nose to it. And I love her tan boots and her skirt with the buttons on it and the way her hair falls across half of her face and then cowlicks out the side. I love her olive skin and her thin arms and her wide smile.

Right now I am happy and my heart is full of love.

Right now. I am happy.