Earlier, grains of sand were finally trying to hug my hands again, and I ungratefully tried to scrape them off. From my hands, they got to my eyes and hair and knees, only trying to spread the love of a happy memory. 

I know now that I love those fragments of rock in spite of how they sat in my eyelids. 

And suddenly, with their friendliness, my eyes regained the desire to see the world’s colorfulness. 

No longer in a hue of confused gray, the world fell back into its optimistic collection of beloved color combinations, and I felt their explosion all at once. 

Quickly, the bright red of my scorched skin turned into a thoughtful gift from the sun. A reminder of my hopeful future spent with the sun as a closer companion than it’s ever been before. I feel a burning love for my new best friend. 

Soon, this fiery feeling is joined by the peace within the light blue clouds. The lightest blue any crayon pack has because, although clouds are really white, it’s too hard to draw them that way. They emulate too much charisma and serenity and naivety to be without color. For them, love feels like soaring. 

People hesitate far too often to acknowledge that love feels like floating. 

And, oh, the pale orange of it all. It’s a shade that everyone carries with them. Some people conceal it, and some hold it out to you privately, and some splatter it on walls and trees and silverware and waters. Then, all of a sudden, things you never thought could be are a spontaneous, hopeful, welcoming shade of love. 

The loyalty of brown begins to make me tear up again. The color of a ground we all grew from that continues to answer our every call and show us to every opportunity. A color betrayed by every selfish act that still holds us and knows us—showing off the truest kind of love. 

And with the electric pink spark of being handed a coffee cup with a smiley face that didn’t need to be there, the royal blue of an unexpected hug, and the lavender of being spoken to in a language much more beautiful than my own, and the green of a fragile growth makes love feel whole again.

Even with knowing that the tides of life will push me back to the sand’s humble remainders again, I sit now in a content silence of rainbow. 

I know now that I love those fragments of rock because of how they sat in my eyelids.