Hi, happy place, part chased-down, part "just" recognized and received. Worst fair-weather friend. Enemy of order and analysis--my religions, familiar grooves I've scratched out in the ol' favorite corner, where demons and dust bunnies have names. Happy place, keeping me tousled and aware, awake to the brightness, keeping us all suspended and alive.
Happy place, let's get one thing straight: I'm not asking for happy in the obvious sense--and frankly, not even comfortable--but some kind of continuing assurance there's purpose in the to and fro, a solid string of assurance piercing through this slop of experience and emotion, connecting one to the next and the next. Since I can't rely on me, can I rely on you?
Happy place, now I remember you're not a place at all, but a Person, occupying the one room in our hearts we never have the key for, or maybe you've changed the locks again. We ransack the rest looking for you, tearing old books off shelves and the stuffing out of pillows. WHERE ARE YOU. The more we look the more we lose, or so it feels. Then we try the knob. Oh--unlocked, that's right. The place where laughter turns to tears without apology, where you remind us, where we remember to simply do the next thing--not everything.
Happy place, I see you in my friends and especially in the eyes of their milk-mustache children, I see you in the sweaty bicyclist who helped me locate my lost toddler, in the haphazard hug of elderly friends who'd each lost a spouse, in the eyes of the bony man in the city busking for his next meal. Happy place, I see you here, where messy moments of connection are miracles, even fleeting ones. That we may see them in time to pull their wrinkled imperfection like a fitted-sheet-lens over the rest.