from soda pop and popcorn trees

She came to us in the springtime, after we'd drunk deep of the season's intoxicated blessings. In music class, pieces like Debussy's Prelude to the Afternoon of a (naughty little) Faun and Stravinsky's Rite of Spring wove their peculiar spells over me until I was as susceptible to the will of the world as he was to the coyly bent sprigs of cherry blossoms which surrounded our rooms.

Love drunk, we laughed all day and deep into the chirping night. Our passions floated out the open window in a testament to the reckless beauty of spring. Green love hung my apartment all around with blossoms that he'd spotted with a careful eye and brought to me. A painted butterfly landed under my door one day, and I was suddenly captured.

Then there was one singular moment, in the golden light of some morning or afternoon, when a thought flitted through and said there was nothing to worry about. This is right and good, the thought said, one minute before we shook our green soda bottles and let the caps fly. All in good fun, what we did that day. Somehow I knew. Somehow he knew. Somehow despite everything in us that was too young, too poor, too reckless, we both knew she had come, and we wanted her there. Our microscopic love child, blessing from the spring, flew into the room and curled up between us.

"Okay," he said, petting her long cinnamon hair.
"Okay," I said, when her turtle green eyes turned to shine into me.

We are glad you are here.