Penguins

Their outer shell is so fucking perfect, it hurts to stare for too long. Like you're blinking up at the yellow sunshine, no cloud cover, no sunglasses. Just pure, fucking light.

Penguins mate for life, you know. (I think I heard that somewhere, once.) If that's the case, then Elijah and Merideth are a couple of waddling, tuxedoed, motherfucking penguins. I swear, they've been together since the dawn of time, like dinosaurs. Fucking dinosaur penguins.

Mer is the type that cooks for everyone, like a regular housewife straight out of the 1950's nuclear family, all black and white, hair in perfect ringlets and an apron around her sand-in-the-hourglass body. She teaches slow kids (she always yells at me when I call them that) how to read and shit like that, in the mornings; the way her face lights up, you'd think she was meeting the fucking president of the USA. She volunteers at the city library. For fun. I swear, that lady's a fucking saint.

Eli is a suit, but not in that shitty corporate asshole way. He's an environmental lawyer, would you believe? He fights for those without a voice. You know, trees and shit. Eli is a fiend on the guitar. He tells me all the time that he jammed with Cobain once or twice, but I always call bullshit.

You can see those two hand-in-hand, strolling through the town every evening, going down to the park where he pushes her on the swings. Their laughter fills the sweet, night air; I swear, you can hear it all over town and it brightens the streetlamps. They act like a couple of puppy-lovesick kids together, even though they're old (like 30's, I think). It makes you sick to your stomach to watch them, but in the best way possible. People cry sometimes, just witnessing a beautiful love like that.

I don't even believe in love, but Eli and Mer, they'll make you so disarmed and gullible that you'll believe in anything. They're from another universe, where love is everywhere and good always wins, like a star-studded dream-come-true.

They have it all. A happy, lovestruck, penguin life.

Yessir, they have it all.