Patterns

This morning, I woke up remembering something happy. The last time this happened was when my first crush/love left his football at my lunch table and I felt really special at 14. 

What I know more than anything else in the last 10 years is dread. How can I tell my brain that all will be well when all the poor thing has been simmering in acidic dread for years, fearing that good thing always rot away into blackened bad. 

Do I even believe that good is happening? I have proof, but what is a memory when the future still hasn’t coloured it in? What is a sweet text when I can’t see the person’s face as he reassures me? 

Patterns repeat. The deepest patterns are left by the biggest blows. Like an axe whipping itself into the soft wood for the first time; and the tree knowing that it is just the beginning. The dreadful axe in a hopeful tree; the sweet, old tree still trying to cram hope between the spaces left behind by the axe. 

Dread and hope in swirling patterns like glitter and tar. What colour will the happy memory be when I wake up a month from now?