Better than This

Right now, right here the man who loves me is playing music in my living room with a friend. The thump of his bass is pulsing upstairs into my bedroom where I sit at my desk letting it come through my feet and into my body like a heartbeat.
My life has never been better than this.

My mom is sitting at the dining room table with her bowl of Rice Chex and her strawberries that were probably grown a mile from here. Maybe she hears the music; maybe she only feels the pulse of it. She tells them they're very good and that they should start a band. They are a band, I tell her when I come down to warm up my tea.

The water outside my back door is barely moving, it seems. But the tide flows in and out in the marina, too, and right now, right here that water is imperceptibly higher or lower than when I started this post.

All of us in this house are breathing in and breathing out. A breath older. A heartbeat farther. The musicians breathe in and out comes song. I breathe in and out come words. My mom breathes in, and sometimes the out breaths are moans--but right now she's quiet. Maybe she's back in her room breathing out snowflakes.