It is a beautiful day.
The heavens are crying like they haven’t in months. The sky is grey, but not the gloomy, thunderstorm grey we normally see this time of year. No, it’s the kind of grey that has a backsplash of light, like the sun was shining and a shallow mist rolled through. It’s all just one shade, like a normal blue sky that has simply been greyscaled, like a filter on your phone. But this is not the kind of grey that you could take a photo of. No, it’s not. Go ahead and try.
It is a beautiful day.
Days like these are my favourite days. I woke up this morning, took a shower, washed my hair, shaved my legs, washed my face, brushed my teeth. I curled up in bed for a while to reminisce in the warmth of the previous night. I put on a sweater two sizes too big, fleece-lined leggings, and Irish cottage socks. I felt as though I was made for one of those artsy, hipster pictures you see on your Tumblr dash every once in a while. I even had a coffee, two creams, one sugar.
It is a beautiful day.
I planned to go for a walk in the fields today, let myself become drenched so that I could curl up in fuzzy blankets upon return to my home. I longed to feel the squish of mud in the tracks of my boots, to hear the sheep bleating in the distance. I wanted to stumble through the little path in the woods that only I know is there. This daydream was interrupted by the sound of chainsaws.
It was a beautiful day.
Orange everywhere, from the workers’ vests and hats to the road signs to the truck itself. Some man, some poor, sad man was sixty feet in the air, hacking at the branches of the tree in my front yard. My tree. “It’s to clear room for the telephone wires, miss,” he assured, but it didn’t seem very assuring. Orange, so much orange, that it made the grey seem…wrong.
It was a beautiful day.
Cutting off the branches of my hundred-year-old tree so that it wouldn’t impose upon the telephone wires. To hell with the telephone wires. Put them somewhere else. “My tree was here first,” I say. “Sorry miss, take it up with the telephone company.” Of course it’s too late now; the branches hit the ground. A few men come and pick them up and throw them in the wood chipper.
It was a beautiful day.