But when I am honest, I must tell you, I cannot always say this. If you had asked me three months ago, I would have withered you with a single look. These streets?! I would scoff. These?! And folded inside my sweatshirt-blanket-mukluks-beanie, I would focus my hateful stare on the scene outside--the snow and the ice and the single-digit temperature--as if the heat of my anger could thaw the gray-scaled world back into warm color. I would curse the actions of slipping on boots and hat and jacket to walk the fifty feet to the mailbox; the penguin shuffle across frozen asphalt to prevent bruises and broken bones; the futility of keeping one's temper when you are held in captivity month after frozen month with three restless pixies--who by February have shed sparkling fairy skins and become imps, full of dark mischief for want of the tempering sun. No, three months ago I cursed these streets and held wistful, heavy, covetous dreams of California in my heart.
Ah, but tonight! Tonight these streets remember their beauty, have begun climbing back into their robes of grandeur. I feel a chill, but I feel it on bare arms. Clear of its smothering white blankets, the ground is raising her colors again. I see green, and that one color alone breathes life back into me. I send my pixies out into the greenness; and as they dash between tree and hill and sky, the last patches of the sinking sun catch new sparkles across noses and hands and strands of hair. Tonight I can look at the stars and remind myself that no streetlights interrupt my looking. I can sit untouched by the mad rushing that belongs to city streets. I can breathe deep blossom scents. I can welcome quiet raindrops. I can touch earth and feel a tug, a connection. And I can say, honestly, that tonight I love these streets.
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