Festivity

// Eduardo Garcia //

"There's a happy feeling nothing in the world can buy, when they pass around the coffee and the pumpkin pie."

I think about sitting with my family after dinner. We have moved from the table to the comfortable chairs. It's dark outside, but the room is yellow with lamplight. My dog nudges my hand. He wants to be scratched, and I oblige him. The grownups are laughing merrily. I chuckle as well. All this amusement comes from being well-fed and full of affection. The four of us are warm and happy.

I wonder if these moments only exist in memory, easily evoked by a couplet or a well-composed photograph, but elusive during the present. They correspond to something longed for rather than something grasped.

I remember the aching melancholy of my early teens. The sun would set early in suburbia, and I'd look for secrets in novels. I wished that someone would consume me the way I consumed those stories.

It seems that I am more invested in aesthetics than reality.