Imagine

for my girl:

Shut your eyes. Really. Shut them now, and listen. I want you to imagine yourself in a great green field, a field full of flowers.

Flowers and green grass, spreading far, wide, over low rolling hills.

All around you, colour and light.

Imagine yourself lying down on the grass, and all you can see are the edges of flowers, tips of grass and a blue, blue sky.

You are surrounded by the sounds of the earth—the tiny rustling sounds of ants moving and grass growing and petals shifting in an almost wind.

Above you, sky. A blanket of blue.

Shut your eyes and imagine yourself floating just a little above the earth. Just a little. So only the idea of you is touching.

You can hardly feel your skin—it's as though your body has become cloud-shaped and just as soft.

Imagine you see wings, now. Tiny wings, wings of all colours, shifting, shadowing—fluttering barely above your skin. All these wonderful colours; they are like rainbows dancing.

They are colours for you to sleep on, float on. Colours for you to dream on.

These colours are for you.

Keep your eyes closed.

Keep the dance of colours inside you.

Keep floating.

Keep floating.

My girl. It is so hard for her to find sleep, sometimes.

She says over and over, “I wish it wasn't night. I wish it was morning.” She finds things to worry about, things that might go wrong.

I talk to her, talk in the dark of things I am glad about. We talk of things that make her happy. Of kittens and hugs and friends. We imagine good, warm things.

And as I write, I think of how hard and cold the winter seems, sometimes, to me. And how it's difficult, some days, to find the joy. Some days the sun can be hard to find.

So…I think of the positives.

Always try to find the positives.

Seek and imagine the positives.

They can be found, you know. In the smallest corners. And in the endless possibilities of our minds.