Between

Once upon a time there was a person who lived between.

Between now and then.

Between happy and sad.

Between full and empty.

Everyone accepted that this person was between.

“That person is perfectly between. So perfectly balanced.”

But this person did not feel balanced. 

In being neither here nor there, this person felt stuck.

“I feel stuck”  The person said.  “stuck in the middle.”

This person was the middle child of three.

This person had brownish middle-colored hair.

This person ate middleish foods—plain peanut butter sandwiches and scrambled eggs and buttered noodles.  And when this person ate, this person was both a little too full, but wanted to eat just a little bit more.  

 This person read books that  usually ended too soon, yet had storylines that went on too long.

This person got tired, so tired of between.

This person longed to feel furious about something.    Or to love something blindly and completely.  This person wanted to feel absolutely stuffed with food, or absolutely ravenous. 

Living in a world of self-imposed gray middleness, this person wanted vibrant color. 

One day this person opened the closet to reveal shirts and pants in every shade and design of gray.

The person sighed.

“Sigh.”  

The person turned around and went to the desk where the gray computer waited.

The person turned on the computer.  A flood of everything poured from the screen, and the person struggled against the tide of color and opinion and passion. 

Then the person, with held breath, typed in the word

LIFE

And hit return.

A thousand sounds came from the computer speakers—

Songs and voices

Bird chirps and elephant roars

The humming of engines and pounding of drums

And the whir of a million people walking and eating

And hugging and talking.

The person was overwhelmed and gobsmacked.

And so happy.

So happy.

The person added LIFE to the online shopping cart

And typed in the credit card number

Digit by painstaking digit

Because the person wanted to get it just right.

Then the person waited in the world of gray

Wearing the gray clothes and saying

Between words, eating between

Foods that were not quite satisfying.

In the fourth week of the promised three to five

LIFE arrived. 

The person looked at the box

And was terrified to open it.

What if it didn’t fit quite right?

What if it made the person dizzy?

What if the person had an allergic reaction to life 

And had to send it back?

The person got the scissors

And painstakingly snipped each piece of tape

That held the box of LIFE closed.

The person snipped the last piece of tape

And the box sprang open.

LIFE exploded everywhere.

LIFE spilled onto the floor and ran down the walls.

LIFE filled the cupboards and saturated the pillows.

The person was covered head to toe in

Brilliant, blinding, noisy, imperfect, delicious

LIFE.   

It was the most painful, wonderful feeling

That the person had ever experienced.

And when the person threw open the closet door

The clothes inside were sparkling rainbows of

Color and texture.

And when the person opened the cupboards and refrigerator,

a million conflicting flavors and scents poured into the

person’s mouth and nose.

The person staggered into living room and 

Fell back onto the sofa that sagged

Beneath so much LIFE.

The person’s eyes closed and dreams and fantasies

epiphanies and terrors assaulted the person’s mind

And imagination.

And it was wonderful.

WONDERFUL.

Wonderful Life.