Dandelion

  Warm.  Inviting.  Promising.

Dandelion is the color after yoga, when the mind and body are calmed and stretched, and you just feel good.  When the laughter radiates inside your chest and the breath escapes in giggled clips and you just feel alive, you understand the meaning of living.  It's the gentle warmth of the place where you climb back into bed and pull the comforter over your shoulders and close your eyes.  It's waking up on a cold day, pulling the covers closer around you, and going back to sleep for a few hours.

It's the color of the feeling I get as his hand finds mine and our fingers lace together.  There's the warmth of his chest and the melody of his laughter that makes my heart heat in dandelion color and hope that he's here to stay for a while.

In the picture he took on Saturday, it's the color that shines from my smile, the pure happiness and the ease in which that smile came.  It's the warmth of having found someone who makes me feel like it's okay to take the chance because he's already caught my fall.

It's the color of Daydreamer by Adele and Lovely by Sara Haze.

When I wake in the morning, it's the smile I find on my phone in the form of "good morning," and nothing more.  It's the realization that I am beautiful as I look in the mirror, stop and really look, and see who I am.

But it's not just the feeling of a blossoming romance or the hints of warmth both mentally and physically.

There are the times when it's the friend you find new connections with.  So often we talk about the same things in different ways, mumbling through the favorites and the dislikes and the discussions about work and school and how both seem so trivial.  Rarely do we have the type of discussions that really bring us closer together, like pulling two threads tighter in a stitching to close the knot securely.  But when we do, when we relate on a more personal level than the mundane daily conversation allows us to do, we find ourselves warm in the friendship we have and smiling at the way they know us.  It's the color of that personal relation and the connecting threads we weave with one another.

The dandelion itself blooms in the warm color of summer, and fades into the soft gray of wishes.  We take that little plant between our fingers and release a breath of unspoken hopes, believing in the seeds to plant possibility and grow into the dreams we have imagined for ourselves.  It's promising, if only in our minds, but sometimes we just need that little seed of hope to keep a smile on our face.