Everyone always told him life was beautiful
No one said why, though. Nonetheless he knew it.
They, all of them, all of you, were preaching to the choir.
He could tell you a million and one reasons why life, the earth, everything
Was beautiful.
He knew them now by heart.
He'd start with the sunshine hitting his skin in the summers, and somehow move onto the rain in June on his windshield.
Then to the way the cold flirted with him in December...
Nibbling on his ears and kissing his cheeks whenever and wherever he went.
He'd talk about smiles from strangers on the tram, at the market,
And, his personal favorite, in the library.
There he'd read words from rebellious souls who, like him, understand that life was more beautiful than anything or anyone that came out of Italy, Brazil, or Spain.
They'd say, and he'd read, about how life was beautiful in the way that a child with a gap between her teeth is beautiful.
In the most perfectly flawed way.
Life is beautiful because of the way a clock chimes every 15 minutes, and the way everyone depends on it.
It's beautiful because of the sound a pencil makes as it vandalizes a blank page of a journal.
It's because of the way everyone knows it, and falls madly in love with it.
He knew it, but they didn't. And they never would.
They just told him that life was beautiful.
Over and over and over again until he was sure he didn't deserve to live in that light.
And he ran away from it into the arms of tragedy.
Still beautiful, but all the more flawless and terrifying.
And there he went, and there he stayed.