[ IP ] A Perfect Day

I stepped back from the railing. It had taken years to find this place again, but here it was. After so many hours of hard work, I was thrilled to even just be looking at the blueness of the sky, the gentle zig-zags of mountain ranges in the distance. I closed my eyes: suddenly the wind brushed my face and swept me away into memory: 
 
 *He's standing next to me. We're both young, old enough to love but young enough to have faith in the impossibility that is the future. Our future. * 
 *I feel his hand press gently on my lower back, and I lean my head on his shoulder. As he wraps his arm around me, I feel the cold band of silver around his finger barely touch my skin. I shiver a little, out of the half-second of surprise and the other half-second of happiness. I fiddle with my ring. I've never been a jewelry person, but we'll both get used to wearing them. For him, I'd do anything. * 
 
 When I opened my eyes, his arms were still around me. I glanced up into his eyes, which now have wrinkles around them -- both from the laughter and joy that life had brought our way and the bad times, the weeks in the hospital I could n't remember his name, our children, our life. But none of that mattered anymore. 
 
 He glanced away from me ( with paint freckles all over my face ) to the bedroom wall. The blue sky, the bench we'd sit on, the mountain ridges... they were all there. I'd spent hours trying to remember, searching the darkest, dustiest corners of my mind, behind the doors that had been locked and bolted years before. But I had found it. And now as he turned back to me, I could see his eyes filled with tears. 
 
 `` Sweetheart... you remembered. You... you remember.'' I pulled him closer and pressed my face against his chest as he held me as tight as he could. 
 
 `` Of course I do.'' 

