I fall for candy apples and new charcoal pencils. And for cute black shoes. I fall for unbaked chocolate chip cookie dough and yarn in shades of pale blue. I fall for seashells and sand dunes and smooth river stones. I fall for leather satchels and new credit cards and white-ripe tomatoes. I fall for plaintive guitar leads and jingle bells and odd noises and sometimes odd things. I like beads and tictacs and marbles and tactile things and light, the way light hits the rooms in my house.
I love voices. Particularly male voices, particularly when they sing. Hard songs with painful emotionally drained verses and powerful choruses. I fall in love with the voices of singers I'll never meet, fall for their words, for the catch at the end of the hook, for the way it's all packaged together and for the gift of pinning that song onto a memory that it will trigger forever when I hear it.
I can be allowed that. It's one of the few vices I wish to keep.
