Prompt 5

Everything is beautiful.

Look at your fingers. Watch them flex and flow as you type. Listen to the clack of the keyboard and the murmur of conversation in the kitchen, muffled by the door. The click of silverware like distant wind chimes.

Look at the softness of the dust gently laid on the warmth of the radiator. The drops from the way the paint fell slowly, and stopped. The crackling in the vents where the heat has made the paint flake like buttery pastry in the oven.

Look at the way the poster ripples against the wall, held in place by tape but straining to be free and fall in whirls and papery tumbles.

Look at the sidewalk and see the cracks spindly city spider webs you walk on every day. Each patch of black was a piece of gum in the mouth of a stranger who walked where you stand now. Each one of them with as many worries and joys as you, each one a world in themselves. You are staring at a galaxy. The cigarettes are the burnt and spent remains of worlds gone by. Watch how they have gathered in the corners. How they have piled. They have come from all over the world, in great ships, through large factories. How many hands shaped each of these discarded stubs? How many hands caressed that charred pile?

Look up. Look at these buildings. These monuments. These towering testaments of what we are capable of. These are buildings that scrape the sky. The pyramids at Giza bow at their feet. The gods of Mount Olympus lived among the clouds.

Look at the sky. The roiling clouds and the piercing blue. Lay back and take it in. Its vastness. Its unfathomable height. The movement of the clouds and the changing color through the day. And night. Watch the light of the city reflected in the clouds. Among the clouds.

Breathe deep. Breathe in the city. Pick apart the smells. A waft from the food cart. The ever present smell of cars, and dirt, and people. The trash on the sidewalk. The faint greenness of the trees and grass. The wet air from the river. All in a cacophony of smell and sensation.

There is beauty in every signpost and every taxi. Every stubbly plant growing through the sidewalk cracks. Every sunset and every sunrise is only a small moment in the majesty of the sky. Take it all in.

Find the beauty in the mundane. The everyday. The forgotten and the unnoticed.

Then show it to someone.