The balm to that little sadness

Some part of me longs for the breezes that would gently shake the wind chimes in my grandmother's backyard, as the little pieces of metal would tremble and that's when you would know that the whole world is silent. That part of me remembers the strange ticklish feeling of laying your head in the grass and looking up at the sun and the blue sky until your vision became spotty, knowing that you could lay there forever if no one disturbed you. But that part also remembers sitting at the kitchen table, staring at the sunflowers on the tablecloth or the rabbit-shaped egg cup that held a porcelain-coloured egg, yolk dripping down one side of the rabbit's ear. It remembers the little sadness that would grip my heart as I ate my egg, a sadness that I would wonder at curiously and ask what business it had to be there. I would receive no reply. It is the same sadness that was much more tyrannical as I laid in the dark in my father's apartment, squished into bed with my sister who had long drifted off to sleep as my fresh tears hit her bare arm laid across the covers. That time, I would ask the sadness what business it had and its reply would be, "you just haven't earned it yet". I believed it and as a result some other part of me softened.

I carried this around, this little sadness, for a long time. I would even say that I am still carrying it, that it clings to me like pollen on the tiny hairs of bees or as dark yellow streaks on a new summer blouse. Or it could be a wound, something like a sunburn inside me that stings and feels open. For so long I wanted the balm to that little sadness. Perhaps at this point I've found it.

But I could never muster a response back to the little sadness, and watching the sunset on the ants crawling through the cracks in the pavement, I never thought I would. Everyone in my life would watch me, as spectators, clasping their hands together and hoping that this sadness wasn't part of me. But some part of me knew that it was, and that part of me longs for the sprinkler and the pink and orange tulips and the sticky sugar of a popsicle running down your forearm. Somewhere, some day, maybe on the shore of the lake where the waves lap and where you ride your bike, the response burst forth from me, saying, "I never will, and that's besides the point".