(One)

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There are a multitude of ways people describe falling, or being, in love, but honestly, I think it's a matter of memories.

It could be the taste of mint toothpaste and grapefruit on a Greyhound bus.

Whitewash, honeybees, and a lawn gnome, tied with lemonade strings on a southern summer day.

Snowstorms in November and tinned peaches for dinner while you wait for the power to come back on.

Watching a fire burn out as someone falls asleep across from you.

A whirling storm of scenes and things- we fall in love with a being, not a person.

We fall in love with the person who was there for you at the hospital after you flipped that truck because it was New Years Eve and everyone forgot who was the designated that night.

(We forget how they screamed at you to leave the house a few hours ago, and how you wouldn't have been on the road, alone and buzzed, if it wasn't for them)

We fall in love with the person who took you to the ocean and taught you to see stars during the day.

(We forget how you saw them down there later, with someone else, explaining the same mysteries like you were no different from a tourist in their exhibit: "A Study In Lives Greater Than Our Own.")

We fall in love with the people who have the power to make us forget their rough pieces, the people who are a force of light in our lives. We fall in love with places and times and things, and the people that represent them.

Your life is like a novel-- years are chapters, tearstained or crinkled with joy, and people are bookmarks and coffee stains and margin-scribbled notes. We fall in love with them because they show us where the pages breathed for us, where paper replaced heart and ink replaced soul.

We fall in love with people because they remind us of ourselves, because they define us.

Because, if we're extraordinarily lucky, they love us back.

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Hello everyone.

This first chapter is kind of dense/boring (PRETENTIOUS OKAY, I GET IT), but PLEASE BEAR WITH ME because there are actual people in the next chapter. Amazing.

(Anyway, thank you for reading and if you liked it, let me know with a vote)

-harper

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