I wrote to a friend about falling in love: 

I told her the things that changed most were the windows, how looking outside became radical, the sky suddenly enveloped all that it touched—like it was expecting veneration, like it was the keeper of our humanity, like the unending promise of possibility 

I told my friend that I’ve never felt so rightly-shaped, I told her that I put a poem in a yellow mailbox, 

That rose-colored nostalgia fills my most mundane intimacies 

She wrote back about chapped lips and light melting over corners, 

She wishes it wasn’t so wrenching 

The softness of the sky makes her want to start drinking orange soda again, if only to swallow the fizz of her youth 

She told me that falling in love is a chair pulling back. It’s a seat at our table. Premature transcendence 

It’s together rising, uplifting, the days stretching in front of us like lilacs in late July. 

Not yet fully ripe in their violet bliss, they’re sparks of opportunity and infinite bloom 

I grew up bathed in the sweet scent of summer lilacs, it is the olfactory intuition of what is to come. Of what has always been 

I remembered lilacs as I spoke to my friend, as we grew into our rounded edges and hope-filled Augusts 

I told her this is the scent of remembering. 

I wrote that undercurrents of possibility run through past loves. 

The past-future permanence is one of flowers on tongues and open skies; gracing empty spaces in ethereal, vibrant incense