Love was a marshmallow I begged for at age three. The perfect white didn’t turn out the way I expected. Once it was on my tongue it changed from pillowy to mush. I wanted to spit it out. I was warned not to, to give it a chance. I jumped down from my chair and ran to hide, to find someplace to get rid of this strangely melting mouthful. Just at that moment I realized I could taste sweetness. The flavor made me happy.
Love was two Nancy Drew books, yellow and blue, the fresh pages smelling of ink and mysteries. Love was a way to become more than I was before, expanded, mesmerized.
Love was red yarn glued to a sheet of white cardboard, in the shape of a heart, and the words Happy 13, the yarn stiff with the dried glue and the shifting freehand letters my sister created.
Love was a small handful of Dahlias, stems wrapped in tinfoil, carried to school on a spring day. It was a watercolor painting of that bouquet.
Love tasted like getting kissed the moment I stepped off of the Greyhound bus. It sounded like two guitars and the voices of strangers, smiling behind the figure of my beloved.
Love was a black eye from my sister’s head when the toboggan hit a bump halfway down the hill. Neither of us knew what had happened, until the swelling, and the question, “Did she hit you?” Punched in the eye by my sister’s skull in a knitted red cap. Laughing, rolling, tumbling in cold snow.
fresh out of my mind 