I couldn't check my e-mail today. I had a feeling that there might be something important waiting for me.

But all I got were lock-ups, frozen screens, incomprehensible errors.

I hit the monitor, jerked the mouse, pushed every key I could think of.

Finally, frustrated I reached down to yank out the power and

one
inexplicable
amazing
yellow
daisy
sprouted from the box.

And I wept, remembering that such beauty had once existed everywhere but now had to break into my house to find me.

The world existed for him in shades of gray. Everything was the same dreary color, drab and unoriginal in every way as if it were all a badly made photocopy of what had once stood in its place. It was like one of those movies shot in grainy black and white where everyone and everything just kind of blended together in a poverty of beauty.

She was part of the gray moving picture he looked upon with general disdain and lack of interest. Then something changed. He saw her tears, and with those tears her face found color, came to life and as he witnessed this unfolding before his eyes he also noticed she was smiling at him. Smiling through her tears. It was a smile of the meekest kind, intended to acknowledge him, unaware of why he was looking at her, why he was looking into her eyes.

He saw things in her perhaps no one had ever seen in her before. He looked deeper into her eyes and felt a great warmth behind her sorrow and when he stepped back he realized she was, in her own way, the most beautiful creature he had ever seen. From her warmth and her beauty, the rest of the movie came to life. Color filled the picture, people came to life and took on a new kind of energy. Each of them were unique and interesting, worthy of knowing and listening to, but she was at the heart of it. Her warmth and her beauty was the key that unlocked his world. Gray skies became blue, grass became green, and everything around him resounded with newfound beauty.

He wrote to her, telling her of how he saw her, how beautiful she was, and how she had given life to everything in the world around him. He had not seen a world this alive in a very long time. He had not been this alive in a very long time. He told her of what he saw in her eyes, what he felt in her heart and how much he wanted to understand who she was and why she carried this great weight of sorrow.

She did not tell him, so he accepted patience as the key to understanding. He longed every day to see her smile at him the way she had smiled at him on that night he saw her tears. And she would, almost every day, but it was all she could give him. That smile would have to be enough, at least for now, at least until she could find a way to let him understand her sorrow, to let him know her story. She would give him bits and pieces, never the whole picture, but she tried. She tried the best she could to give him what her life and her weight allowed. He accepted this, breathed deeply, and then he wept. He wept because he knew. He knew there was more, that this story was far from complete. He wept because the beauty of the world, so long stark and frozen in his sight, had returned before his eyes.

And every night, alone in his bed waiting for sleep, the last thing he hears is her saying goodnight to him. The world is filled with color once more. And so are his dreams.

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