Sunshine in Small Hands

You draw the sun the same way every time: a yellow circle with lines shooting out like it is shouting, taped to the refrigerator next to six other yellow circles just like it.

I have started to notice I check that refrigerator more than the actual sky. Your version is more reliable. It does not go behind clouds. It does not set. It just waits there in crayon, doing its one job.

You do not know yet that some mornings I am running on fumes, that the drawing is doing work you did not intend it to do, holding up a version of the day before I have found a reason to on my own.

I used to think joy was supposed to be an event, something that arrives and then leaves. Yours is smaller than that and somehow sturdier: a spoon banged against a high chair, a name for the dog that is not the dog’s actual name, a sun redrawn every day like the sky might need the reminder.

I am learning the difference between happiness and this, which is quieter, does not perform for anyone, and is somehow still there in the morning, taped up, waiting, when I am not.