darling

I love how my British grandfather calls me darling.

Darling, what a wonderful word.

It makes me feel darling, 

English, like I ought to have one leg lightly crossed over the other,

or be smoking out an open window 

or adjusting the shoulder tie of a long silk dress.

(Like this morning, Ananya telling me they are tremendously excited to come visit.

The sudden word so delicious that I let out a giggle when I see it pop up on my phone. Tremendously.)

How delightful language can be if we let it,

effervescent and vivacious, scrumptious and diddly,

vapid and intoxicating in its vapidity.

I love it even in meaninglessness, beauty for the sake of beauty,

and if something is said even better,

the luxuriousness of caring about something beyond survival

a political statement in itself

an adoption of one's right to life.

(And I am beginning to understand more and more that the worlds we live in are of our own creation.

Not everything is bequeathed. And I want to live in a world of tremendouslys, of rapture and iridescence, of darlings.)