Happy
by Tytti Heikkinen
I’m happy-happy-happy, says the gummy bear bouncing in the meme video until the jaws of a steel bear trap snap shut around its foot. That doesn’t happen to me in this alternative universe. It’s not that I got into art school today. I just am, happy as a duck on a silver platter, if the duck is still alive, and I am. Life is my catnip, so what more do I need? Under the lindens, the main street twists like a sluggish boa, and I have these bare knees and sharp elbows to offer it.
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Happiness: the peppermint peak of a red-and-white Mount Everest, where the snow hasn’t started melting yet. I wave to the Estonian vanaema ladies at the corner and to Mr. Victor, who has electric blue streaks in his silver hair and a cigar nub in his mouth, and to Jean-Lou, who’s sunbathing in his wheelchair, and to the stray dog who follows him everywhere. The Spanish bartenders shake tequila drinks, and I throw a greeting to them too, and they wave back in unison.
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Happiness: the sea that looms like radiant metal, the parasols glowing cobalt blue. Little boys are gathered around a dead fish, feeling their arms and squeezing their tiny muscles; for now, they’re safe. Mrs. Desai, who glimmers in her sari with gold threads, begins the roll call, and the boys rush toward her. Mrs. Desai’s voice is as warm as the low, just a slightly threatening purr of a mother cat. A speedboat passes by, and the waves wash over the dead fish’s dented cheeks and gaping mouth. The lower the sun sinks, the longer the shadows of its teeth.
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Happiness: half a cheese roll peeling out from the parchment paper and a tetra of apple juice; the light through the parchment; the clouds that are as round as the heads of little boys chasing each other like a pack of huskies bound together by the warm wind. Happiness: a few pennies still left. I wait until sunset to buy my triple-scoop cone and take it to the pier that stretches far out over the sea. Its smell of wood and resin mixes with the rum-sweet scent of my cone. All kinds of people are gathered on the pier, all there because they have this same eye for beauty, horizon, and new, glittering possibilities.
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Happiness: the light that turns to darkness, smiling at its obscure beauty, the shadow of the open mouth that merged with the other shadows. I sink my teeth into the waffle cone I’ve been saving. A school of baby fish has appeared next to the pier. I crumble the cone for them with my tiramisu-dripping fingers. Fireworks are being launched from a pleasure boat, and I am the happiest gummy bear in the sky with such sweet-tasting fingers that they could even make a steel trap cry. Happiness: the shiny breast feather of a blackbird, tied into hair.
Tytti Heikkinen’s work has appeared in Europe, North America, and New Zealand in journals such as Siècle 21 Littérature & Société, Precipice, Acumen, The Offing, Ex-Puritan, and Maryland Literary Review, among others. She lives in Finland.