The fastest way to get to heaven, is to bring it with you. These are the words that flood my mind as I glance over at the little piece of heaven sitting in my passenger seat, brown hair flapping in the wind, her hands in the sky, a bright glimmer of happiness in her chocolate brown eyes. We fly down the coast and I watch my worries fly out of the open convertible top, our stresses disappear with the wind, our happiness getting caught in our teeth. I can hear our happiness bubbling and screaming with each of our laughs. So we laughed, the deep kind of laugh, the laugh that starts in your toes and travels all the way up through your stomach to your throat up to your nose and it makes your head shake. It is the kind of laugh that I live for, your laugh. Heaven is not a place, or a time. It is wherever you are, and whatever minute I spend with you. Heaven is a place that I go every time I look into your eyes, every time I hear your laugh, see your smile, smell your perfume in the air. You are my little piece of heaven. Winding down the coast of whatever state we are in, in whatever car we rented, during whatever season it was, none of that mattered, because winding down the coast with you is perfection. It is noticing the tiny flecks of gold in the corner of my eye as your hair catches the sun. It is feeling the wind whipping through our clothes and hearing your giggling whip through my eardrums leaving me giddy. As we drive, I feel something fall atop my nose, then below my eye, then on my fingertip, little droplets of rain. I look up at the nearly cloudless sky and wonder. Wonder how a beautiful day could yield such conflicting weather. I look down a little and wonder how a beautiful girl could yield such conflicting emotions. The rain falls harder, rain drops whipping against our faces like bugs on a windshield, I pull our car over. I step out into the pouring rain and smile. I smile the kind of smile that starts in your throat, the kind that rises from your throat and makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end. The kind of smile that is contagious. On earth there is no heaven, but there are pieces of it. And I know as the droplets of rain trickle off of my head, I have one of those pieces in my passenger seat. I dance around to your door, droplets of rain bouncing off of my head and swing you out. Your hands close on mine and I know my piece of heaven is holding me. Holding me as rain engulfs us, drenching us from head to toe. Dripping wet, we fly down the coast of whatever state we’re in and wind whips through our drenched shirts and shorts. Yet, I am warm for I have a little bit of sunshine in my passenger seat. A little bit of pure joy, thawed out happiness, raw love, in my passenger seat. Now I sit next to you, in some car, some place, somewhere, sometime, but those things do not matter because it’s not just someone, its you. The fastest way to get to heaven, is to bring it with you. And I definitely have.