I had a girlfriend who slept so beautifully that I couldn’t help but watch her. Her face relaxed so completely, with her mouth falling into an angelic kiss and eyelids folded so tenderly over her eyes, that felt that I would literally die from overexposure to her beauty. She breathed easily, her lips laid gently against one another, arms folded gracefully in any number of positions around her body. It might sound like a bit much, but I took photos of her face while she slept. It was done with total respect. She was just so utterly beautiful.
I have seen this beauty in children, babies especially. I don’t know when it leaves… probably when we are introduced to so much inanity and senseless duty. When I’ve seen adults sleep, they’re fraught with pain and fear or they’re so completely relaxed that they are a comical and slovenly mess, tongues hanging out, pools of drool collecting beneath their life-weary faces. Don’t get me wrong, there were times when the whisper of a dream or concern would pass across her face. But it never stayed. Like a solitary grey cloud blowing over a sagebrush speckled expanse of prairie beneath a crystal-blue sky… it never stayed. She had a gift and I am so grateful that I’ve witnessed it. There was magic when she slept. I even maintain that this was the secret to her success.
Even now, when I have a stressful day, have a great deal happening, I look at a photo of her angelic sleeping face and am transported back to those moments. Quiet mornings of laying beside her, watching her breathe, shift sweetly through dreams, holding them for observation as they passed away, and then returning to her silken lipped, angelic grace. With so many things to love about a person, this is one I had never expected to allow into my heart.
I am full of gratitude.