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Good things come in the color purple.
Maybe you see it more in flower petals than you do in velvet wine, or maybe you like the tang of fermented grapes on the flat of your tongue. Maybe you taste it all in sin, or you like the soft threads of violet dresses where they slip between your fingers, or you are merely a human born of simplicity with a love for red-blue hues.
All you know is that good things come in the color purple. Rarity, semblance, symbolism. You look for it, sometimes, and you see it when your eyes are open wide enough.
You see it right now.
It’s as you sit in the shade of a park’s largest tree searching for purple that you see them. And they are happy, and the world is theirs, and you could learn the ways to envy if you weren’t so enthralled by their very existence.
Everything about all the things you don’t know becomes obvious for a mere moment. They answer all the questions you’re too afraid to ask without even knowing who you are, and perhaps they do not know they are being witnessed, for they do not turn.
They look nowhere but to each other. And by the way the lean and sway without a breeze you know one thing, and it’s so clear-cut it would feel stupid to say anything else: they are in love.
And you do not know them. You couldn’t even guess their names; from what you see, eyes wide open, they are merely two boys who cannot get enough of each other. They look young enough to be called stupid but old enough to have responsibility, but even through their shared burdens that go unspoken on stained lips they have enough time to push at each other’s shoulders and giggle.
Maybe you envy that. Maybe you don’t. No matter how much space there is in your steady-beating heart for jealousy, they are simple, and they are full of joy, and you watch them be unbridled. They exist as if they are in private, as if they are hidden, as if they are the only people in the world.
Laughter lives on their lips. You are too far away to hear it, but you can see the way their grins split their faces in two.
You wonder how long they’ve known each other. Maybe it’s forever, or maybe it’s only a little while; whatever it is, you don’t think it matters. They could be strangers or they could wear wedding rings, they could have just finished a fight or just kissed each other like they meant it.
None of that matters as much as right now, as much as the present. And they drink in as much of each other as they can get, reaching into picnic baskets with gentle hands that caress cheeks and rub thumbs over the backs of each other’s palms.
They take everything they can from each other. It’s beautiful, and it’s silent, and it’s everything.
One of them procures a bunch of grapes from the wicker basket they sit with. And they are abundance, and they are tempting, and they are sugar-sweet beneath snapping skin. They are purple, and they are good, and they are just as beautiful as the air that swims through the calm night air.
Two hands connected to two bodies grapple to pull grapes off the bunch. And they reach through the air between them to slip the fruit between each other’s lips, and they are always smiling, and they smile through red-violet sugar under the stars in the grass.
It is so, so simple. They look at each other as if they are the world.
And you taste something sweet on your own tongue, careful and spreading. It’s familiar, sucrose, something you want more of. You understand the beauty of things like this, of simple things like this, of how easy it is to exist on nights like these.
They are eating grapes for no apparent reason, and the world is decadent and vermouth and sugar and love.
They own it all, and you are only a witness, and you watch them put grapes on each other’s tongues and laugh like there’s a joke you can’t hear. You watch them share all the time they have right then with each other, you watch them waste seconds on simple sugars and unspoken words.
You waste your own seconds on their minute existence. You waste your own seconds watching them love each other, because they do, and you wouldn’t change it for the world. You have never seen a love so palpable, not one that speaks so loudly without any words at all, not one where hands are carded through feathered hair at the same time mauve fruit snaps between ivory teeth.
They exist for each other. They exist for love. They exist for all the simple, beautiful things that deserve more appreciation than they get.
They exist for the simple joys of food and companionship. For the moments spent on picnic blankets with grapes pulled right from the stem, fruits forged by love and heart-shaped leaves that spread out, out, out.
For a time, you exist to watch them. You watch them hold fruit between their fingers, you watch them pour all their love into each other and the grape that dances on each other’s lips, you swallow them whole without ever opening your mouth.
A smile crosses your lips. You cover it with your hand, a palm curving inward to hide it all, and you are glad for the way you go unnoticed. You are invisible in all the right ways, and you can watch their love unfold without worry or fear.
You can watch them share fruit and time and every last piece of themselves. You can watch them melt and reform and melt again. You can watch them pull grapes from the bunch until there is scarcely a bunch to be labelled anymore, and you can watch them fall back against the grass with eyes for the constellations you either can or can’t discern.
But you aren’t looking at the sky right now. You find beauty in less conventional places.
They are together and the stars are bright and the wind is warm; you get to see it unfold, you get to watch them share, and you get to taste the phantom sugar of it all on your tongue. It’s times like this that you are reminded that love is more than just a word or a feeling; it’s more like a god, and those in love are holy, and they are holy, and we are holy, and you are a part of the violet spirit that rebirths itself again and again and again between every person on the planet.
They are the incarnation of simple joys and food and companionship and stargazing in each other’s faces rather than the sky.
You are the incarnation of appreciation and beautiful assumption and all the things that come with witnessing someone else’s adoration. You have your own adoration for it all, a calm give and take that you could have more of if there was any left to find.
They are love. You are love, too. The world is decadent and vermouth and sugar and love.