To the casual observer, you might think I don't clean my fingernails very often. The grey smudge on my right thumbnail, though, isn't dirt. It's a small bruise. And, with some fascination, I have watched it slowly make its way to the edge of my nail, evidence that life, indeed, is moving forward.
On the days when I overlook my thumb's progress, there is always the backup band making its way up my big toes, the tattered silver-and-blue paint chips of an early August home pedicure. More than once, I've reached for cotton balls and acetone, ready to rub off the reminder of those first days of the school year. Each time, though, I stop, opting rather for the slow experiment of marking my days in high-gloss remnants.
Through this strange and often brutal winter, I have drawn some comfort from my keratin measuring sticks, their steadfastness buoying me up when I would otherwise swear that spring will never come. There, too, are the birds, the Cardinals and Robins and even the Caroline Wren, each shaking off the pre-dawn chill with its audacious and throaty song of hope.
I am grateful for the hum of the universe, and its display of utter unconcern for first-world humans and their app-laden lives. Especially today, when I was awakened not by bird song but much, much earlier by lists of things banging around in my head, and worries that, truly, are not worries at all but, rather, made-up things that I've given myself to do.
Ultimately, what pulls me out of bed--too early, even, for the morning paper--is the lull of a fire in our fireplace, the quiet, warm and committed hump that is Finn, sitting curled up next to me on the couch. I am drawn by the low hum that is not human. The grey spot on my thumb, quietly making its way to the edge of the universe, where it will unlatch itself and float away forever, tickling the stars along the way.
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