Some of the beautiful things.

Just when her life was the most sodden with disappointments that it had ever been...
When she felt the only thing she wanted to do was slip into a fading nothingness; an anonymous grave....
Just when she had forgotten there is hope...
Then, she discovered it: the preservation of the things that made her happiest.
She collected empty bottles & jars and in them stored her treasures.

{Extract of sunshine; spice of the wind on an autumn noon.}

She set these containers on a shelf in an alcove in her kitchen, labeling them with a meticulous hand.

{Salt tasting of ocean breezes; essence of a feathery kiss.}

Pride welled in her heart when she surveyed the neat lines of her assorted riches. Lovingly, she would run her fingers along their varied surfaces. Some warm, some cool.

{Decanters full of intoxicating moonlight-infused water, gathered from a lake at midnight.}

With a careful reverence, she dusted them every day.

{A jar full of the fog that seems to creep from the forests and settle in the roads.}

Every day her collection grew, for now her senses were opened and she found beautiful things everywhere she went.

{Bottle upon bottle filled full of the infectious giggles of the little boy who lived down the street.}

All these years, she had mechanically fed her body but starved that thing inside her. The thing inside everyone that is sustained by the abstract & beautiful things of life.
She had forgotten you need more than physical sustenance to keep one's soul alive.
But, now she has remembered... and her life has never been more dear to her.