I love the pink fuzz of peonies exploding on the bush, their petals like silk handkerchiefs soaked in sugar water, and the buttery yellow of marigolds that burn even brighter beneath a midday sun. I love perfume that lingers in the hollow of a throat; jasmine unraveling its honeyed musk, vanilla curling like warm breath against skin. I love bubble baths where the foam drifts like clouds, and the sound of songbirds at 5 a.m., that first fragile note that cracks the world open again.
But I also love the dark.
I love the way rot smells, damp and fertile and patient, when I turn over a log in the woods and find the earth chewing itself into new soil. I love the collapse of a dying sunflower, its blackened face drooping toward the ground, seeds still clinging like teeth. I love black crows on power lines, their wet-glass eyes watching from the corner of the yard, and the way a room feels when dusk pulls every sharp thing into soft shadow. I love endings. The last page of a book. The final breath of a fire. The stillness after a storm when the world holds its tongue.
Because here is the truth: you cannot understand the gasp of a rose without knowing the quiet of the grave. Life and death are not opposites. They are the same door, seen from two sides. The sun makes the moon visible, catching its chalk-white face in a fist of light. The moon makes the sun bearable, a cool hand after a fever. One feeds into the other, over and over, a cycle so ancient and relentless it becomes a kind of lullaby.
So yes, I feel drawn to the edges; the brilliant flare of a dandelion field and the deep rot beneath it. The wet shine of new petals and the dry rattle of last year’s stems. I do not choose between them. I stand in the place where they touch, knowing that at any moment, life will tip me one way or the other. Into the sun. Into the dark. And either way, I will already be home.
