AlexanderPaupoff

Someone once asked if I had ever been in love. The answer is yes, a thousand times over. Yes, I have loved people, but also places, books, animals. I have loved the wind on my face and the specks of dust caught in a sunbeam. I have loved strange ice cream flavors, the view from the mountain, plush chairs and wooden tables. I have been in love with frayed shoelaces, with comfortable jeans, with the mosaic wall tiles in Mexican restaurants. I have fallen in love a million different ways; the shimmer of metallic blue porcelain has caught my eye; the sound of windchimes has made me pause. I have lingered too long in libraries, put notebooks back on the shelf with a hesitant hand. I have loved grey hair, nautilus shells, flooded streets, leather satchels, the scent of vanilla, pillows, riverstones, inglenooks, mason jars, window seats, the architecture of churches. I have loved the comfort of a messy bed, the anticipation of a letter, the glide of scissors on laminated

In her youth she fancied herself having an overflowing garden full of tomatoes and potatoes and peppers. Those dreams faded, however, as she swelled like a pumpkin, giving birth to a girl with verdant hair and citrus skin. She didn’t know how to care for a living being—it was hard not to be a perennial and fast learner; any misstep could be the last with no one to tell her the ways of the world, the ways of ripening. In the first month, she cursed herself for all she did not know; she’d done such a poor job with her own soil, she had to promise her daughter more: one day she would send her off into the world to know and to have all that she didn’t. Every season her motherhood was ripe with newness; the child grew in vibrancy: plump orange cheeks competed with winter jasmine amidst icy frost; evergreen smile immutable as she careened through the hollyhock and daffodils of spring; legs sprawled as she leapt through the coreopsis and basil of summer; hands outstretched to pluck