The Window

         She asks me, “So what’s your favorite color?”
         That’s an easy question, my favorite color is blue. It's the most beautiful color I’ve ever seen. It’s been my favorite for as long as I can remember: As a child my walls were blue, I savored the blue M&M’s when I was allowed candy, and even now I love the blue oceans. If I were to be asked what shade specifically is my favorite, then I would struggle with the question for a bit. I tend to like most shades of blue, anywhere from an iced lightning to a mourning ocean. But my favorite would probably have to be the classic royal blue. There’s just something beautiful about it’s deep, resonating hue.
         Before I answer her question, I realize how in all our years of friendship I never actually learned what her favorite color was. I try to imagine what hers might be based on the characteristics I’ve come to know. I can see her loving the color purple, but not the dark purple that everyone imagines at first thought, but rather a lighter color, like the offspring of red and blue got drunk on white wine. No, I take it back. I can see her being purple, but a deep enveloping purple, a russian violet, similar to her jacket when she hides behind it to avoid the threat of the wind’s bite. Or perhaps a solid green, fresh grass under an overcast sky, like the day she and I kicked off our shoes and massaged the grass with our feet with no fear of the impending rain. No. No, her color seems to be a soft red, like the way her rose-blushed cheeks look when she smiles. Or the way she maintains a straight face when I make a lame joke, when we both know she’s suppressing a laugh. Or in the least a well deserved pity laugh.
         That's the reason why I make puns, why I try to be funny. It's so I can see her smile. So I can hear her voice. Because there's something beautiful about that voice when all of life's stresses, at least for a moment, melt away, and what's left is a small world of joy. And like an addict that doesn't know how to stop, I keep going. I tell another joke, another roast, just to relive the feeling of holding that world in the palm of my hands. At least for a moment.
         I shoot up with her laughter and I don't clean the needles because I’m afraid of wiping away the moments. I get high on her joy and each blunt is a smile that hits me with the blunt force of a freight train in mid flight. I become so wasted that my body’s screaming, mind’s fleeting, heart’s beating, what is this feeling? A volatile state of being teetering on the edge of the world, bound erupt into a thousand suns at her slightest touch and illuminate the darkness, spilling into the universe the breath of life, like the breath I take now to spill the words I kept restrained for two years too long, I open my mouth to tell her I love her,

         But then I look into her eyes.

         Dear god, her eyes.

         And suddenly my breath is restrained. Those blue-mottled-greys, like heavy crystallized clouds that suck the color from the sky, only to pour it down and fill the oceans we’ve sailed across in a boat we’ve built ourselves. Eyes that test the depth to which a heart can swim. A thousand suns caught in the web of her universe. I try to find the meaning in that universe, but instead I find a meaning in myself; a newfound purpose to board a shuttle and explore the galaxies left uncharted. I look into her grey eyes, and I see my reflection surrounded by those distant stars, and I begin to wonder how big my role truly is in that universe.

         Her question is a simple one, and I know without a doubt what the answer is.

         “My favorite color would have to be grey.”
         She gives me a curious look. “Grey? Of all colors?”
         “It's the most beautiful color I’ve ever seen.”