Lessons From the Kissing Booth

We learned that the third rule of fairytales is to abandon the brambles the refuse to give way, to not waste away trying to see through the thorns when there's a scenic overlook just up the road. And still I stood there for a while, feet planted firmly in the road, sure that if I looked at the problem for long enough I would be able to see through it. It never happened, of course, but the best thing about fairy tales is how much can be fixed by plain old magic, and while I waited the thorns magicked themselves away and I could walk through. Scratched, of course, from all that time stubbornly thrusting my hands into the heart of things just to see if it still hurt, but intact and slightly wiser. It turned out the sun had been hiding behind the brambles all this time, and as I walked the love letters that I had hung on the thorns in the rain began to dry out. All of our faces lifted toward the light.

I don't speak very well, and sometimes I talk myself in the opposite direction of where I was heading. Partly this is because of my habit of chercher des chichis, the French phrase that translates basically as seeking frills but more closely means to look for unnecessary complications in things. The trouble with talking is that I get tangled up like a kitten in a ball of string, careening off and smashing things when I should have learned by now to stay still. I should learn to speak only in haiku until I can be trusted not to break things simply because they are unreasonably good. I should learn to trust the magic.

I should learn to say what is actually true as simply as a poem by Izumi Shikibu: "In this world/ love has no color/ yet how deeply/ my body/ is stained by yours."