Two Cherries on Top
It dawned on me while writing this piece that I had this assignment once before. As a freshman in college, we were asked to write about it without using any keywords that had to do with it. No mushy, no fuzzy. Nothing too obvious. The professor just said, “Write about ‘it’ so that we know what you’re saying without having to say it. Saying it is ‘cheap.’ Writing about it is one of the hardest things to do because not everyone experiences it. It’s easier to write about pain or how unfunny the world is. It takes someone bold and someone brave to write about it truthfully…”
At the bagel store in February, my mom said, “You really feel this way, don’t you?” I said, “Ew, Mom!” because even though I felt it, I hadn’t come to terms with it yet.
In March, Andres and Zach drove me home from a night out dancing when the feeling greeted me again. I blurted out how I felt and talked it over with the boys. It’s funny because I thought they’d be the only two people to get it. “Is it true?” I couldn’t even fathom the idea because it made my heart skip two beats, bringing out a sparkle that first appeared in December over a green and yellow Adidas jacket, multiple gin and tonics, and a few kisses outside The Bowery Hotel.
It was a windy night in late April, and I thought about it the whole car ride home — so much that I knew I had to write it down. The feeling struck me like two fingers in an electrical outlet. As I drove by a video billboard of tulips growing at double speed, Louis Armstrong played on the radio. Armstrong sang, “I’m going to lay down my sword and shield,” and I just knew.
It makes me feel like I could jump up and kiss a star, sail around the world, and that the moon and the sun understand each other perfectly. It’s Neopolitan ice cream in the tub with whipped cream and two cherries on top. It makes me want to line up every person I’ve ever looked in the eye in a single file line and introduce him to them one at a time like some prize.
It’s true what they say - that it gives you wings, makes you fifty feet tall and able to dance on a cloud.
I thought I felt it once before, but it was only as someone who never understood me was walking out the door. That time, it wasn’t real, but this time, I knew it was because the feeling opened the car door for me and invited itself inside to stay. It’s better than the sound of my favorite songs and the saxophone on the radio at 3 am when I can’t sleep. It’s a live performance by Prince, where it feels like he’s talking directly to you.
On January 15th, I wrote a note on my phone: “I looked in the mirror and said, ‘I’ve never felt this way before.’ Maybe practicing in the mirror would solidify my feelings without scaring myself.”
I didn’t have to look in the mirror anymore to know that the feeling was real. I practiced mouthing the words a few times when his back was facing me. My expression softened, and I didn’t need to see what it looked like when the thought came to me, like my favorite movie scene or the memory of laughing so hard that my stomach hurt and tears rolled down my eyes.
I knew it was real because even though I was still a little mad at him, I felt the sensation of smelling red roses, daffodils, rows and rows of lavender, and hundreds of years of people saying it before me. It was like I had just won the lotto, but I didn’t need to hold the money in my hands because I knew I had it without them having to tell me. The world might be destroying itself outside, but inside, three words of tenderness laid down on my shoulder and said, “You’re a winner.” I knew it from the moment we met. Lucky me.