Contemplating the end of a long "sabbatical"

I sit and wonder how to best soak up my last moments of unemployment.

It’s the first of April and the sun is setting on this waiting game that started at December’s end.

Life is a volley between feast and famine,

And there’s no doubt I’m sitting firmly in the latter.

I squirm in my seat.

I can see the feast ahead.

But I’m not there yet.

No, no. I look around me and I see clearly – I’m not there yet.

I am right here.

I’m right here wearing my worn out shoes and outdated clothes.

But my bowl isn’t empty.

It’s full of rice and beans!

“Survival of the fittest” I joke with my Love, as we smile through tears at the state we’re in.

Secretly my mind is on that last piece of chocolate, sitting cold and preserved in the empty cheese drawer of our fridge.

We’re saving it for a rainy day, we say.

‘Cause right now,

with our garden that won’t grow, the cool that won’t stay in, and the mosquitos that won’t stay out –

It aint rainin’.

Oh no, that sun is shining.

It lights up this city and lights up this flat and lights up my baby’s eyes.

Those eyes…

They can’t decide if they’re green or they’re blue.

They seem to spark when that dimple shows up on the right side of his face,

Hiding in that speckled scruff of a beard he won’t let grow.

I follow those eyes and I see – [gasp]

They’re lookin’ at me!

I look deep into those turquoise pools,

And I start to fall.

He smiles, my heart pounds, my lips are chasing his, I’m sure I’m gonna drown, and then he says:

“How ‘bout them beans?”

I laugh,

And then he laughs.

We laugh til we cry and we hug til we sleep and then we say goodbye…

To another day.

I’m one day closer to that shiny, new job,

One day closer to paying off that debt,

one day closer to something new in that bowl.

After all,

One day is all we got.

Each and every day is just a collection,

Of the here’s,

And the now’s,

And the moments we call: “present.”

We call them that because that is what they are:

A present, a gift,

Already unwrapped and waiting to be seized.

I wake up in the morning on my last day of unemployment and I see that sun is shining but I say:

“Sure looks like rain to me!”

I make a beeline for that fridge,

That drawer,

That patient piece of velvety dark chocolate, because I know..

No matter what the weather,

Right now is all we got,

And I’ll be damned if I’m not gonna seize a delicious piece

of that stuff we call,

life.