Today was a good day.

I don’t know how else to put it. I woke up this morning the same way I always do. Bleary eyes blinking in the stream of sunlight pouring in through blinds that barely shade out the world past the windows. Fumbling for glasses, getting dressed. Walking down the block for a cup of piping hot coffee. Three blocks to class. Four blocks back.

But today was a good day. The sun streamed through brighter, the taste of coffee clearer, the cold November air pleasantly sharper. The leaves turned a livelier color than they had yesterday, and the sky had been painted a blue that matched the robin’s eggs we had found under the porch last spring.

Today was a good day. As the turned leaves fell onto the sidewalk, padding the ground for our tired feet, the curtains between the world and me fell away as well, and I found myself privy to its quiet happiness and glow. I could see better the joy in people’s smile, and felt the joy in my own. I felt infinitely closer to other people, and felt the gap between myself and other souls narrow, narrow, disappear, until the world was a unified pulse of a single entity.

Today was a good day. The air, pregnant with possibility, commanding its own attention, calling to the world to begin, to start again, to return with a zeal it had almost forgotten. So, when I opened the door at the end of class to reenter the chilly fall city, I smiled.

Today was good.