Unseen Beauty: A Journal

Crystalline

It is one of those perfect mornings, crystal, clear, chilly. I traced my way from my car to the building at 7 this morning, my footsteps echoing in the still air. For a moment, there was no traffic, no air conditioning, just the hush of the Florida winter. My breath puffed in the air in front of my face, curling out into tendrils as it dispersed into the silence. It had been a rough night; I had struggled for most of the night with a difficult decision, and sleep was elusive. But stepping out of the metal shell of the car, there was a sense of peace, of liberation.

I traced my way across the familiar route: mailboxes, campus map, rose bushes huddled in the cold air, and then a sound cut across the silence. I looked behind me, unsure where the noise had come from in the deserted morning, and a flash of movement caught my eye. Above me, hanging against the pale dome of the sky was the dark silhouette of one of our two resident kestrel hawks, her wings beating as she winged her way across the periwinkle dome above me in search of breakfast.

I stood there, shivering, watching her move, beauty in motion. The sky over the live oaks was just beginning to shift from mauve and into blue and the last stars of the night before were still visible, paling in the brightening glow of the sun. The light seemed to cling around the kestrel, casting her into deeper shadow as she moved away from me, winging her way across the bowl of sky.

Closing my eyes, I breathed in the cold morning air, savoring the moment. I turned and walked up the stairs and into my office, dreading the workday, but knowing that I would survive, dwelling in that single moment of freedom and beauty.