A Wednesday home from work with the harsh beginnings of a cold blanketed in mental exhaustion is not the perfect day.
I couldn't tell you, for instance, what the sunlight felt like--or if the sun shone at all on the Boston coast.
The harbor might have been blue or grey or green. It is part of the ocean, after all, and more unpredictable than the color of my eyes.
My room darkened until it was black and only when my roommate returned, knocked, wanting to show off her newly purchased clothes did shadows appear from the artificial light of a sixty watt bulb.
Of course, I felt intruded upon. I was talking and laughing out loud, breathing around the soreness in my throat, sneezing and sniffling, aching in muscles and joints alike.
But mostly, I felt cheated of my time to be full of someone else.
My roommate prattled on, and then amazed me (people often do) by asking if we could listen to Dar. "Who is that woman," she asked, "that you were listening to this weekend--with the voice?"
Oh.
And she reclined quietly on my bed and listened. Since she moved in, I have not heard silence from her, and I felt that I was using Dar to soothe a child--like a ride around the block in my parents' car soothed me--it seems I always wanted movement in my life, even if it was only in a square circle.
She left, after a few songs, to make dinner and invited me to eat with her. I declined, but the smell brought me across the apartment into the kitchen where she had already set a place for me.
She complimented my eyes as we spoke over dinner--the blueness of them.
But they're green, I said.
No, they're blue, and she made me turn to the light. Oh, blue-grey, and I do see some green.
It's only because I'm sick. Like the ocean when it storms--my eyes grow unpredictable, and sometimes they're not the ocean at all but a cloudy sky.