after Alex Dimitrov

I love coincidences. 

I love surprises, especially pleasant ones. 

I love the radio. 

I love finding joy in the things we can’t control.  

I love the space between winter and spring, and how it feels like a fresh start despite its recurrence. 

I love contradictions. 

I love the simplification of things that are otherwise too complicated for the human heart to understand. 

I love things I don’t understand. 

I love friendship.

I love routines. 

I love riding the same bus every morning, no matter the weather. 

I love the passage of time and what it does to us. 

I love looking at my life through the lens of five years ago and realizing everything is exactly and nothing like I imagined it to be. 

I love growth. 

I love watering plants. 

I love magnolias, how they bloom for only two weeks, how it forces you to pay attention. 

I love temporary. 

I love performances. 

I love jazz. 

I love improvisation, how it instantly turns music into a version of itself that has never existed before and will never exist again. 

I love once in a lifetime. 

I love childhood best friends. 

I love that old memories are like the bricks of a house, rarely considered but entirely foundational.

I love that losing things doesn’t make you stop loving them. 

I love souvenirs and photographs. 

I love art. 

I love that art attempts to explain the unexplainable, in order to make living more bearable. 

I love coming to accept that some things will be left unexplained. 

I love dancing, with no explanation other than that there is music. 

I love everyone who has danced here with me. 

I love that none of it is a given. 

I love believing that I will dance again. 

I love that I am not too old to know better.