Love comes in so many unexpected forms. Sometimes, it comes in the form of folded laundry, in trash that disappears without asking, in small tasks handled while you sleep. And sometimes love arrives in the form of seventy peonies. An embarrassment of beauty that serves no practical purpose except to remind us that softness still exists. It's almost cringe, this kind of gesture...too much, too obvious, too unafraid of being called ridiculous. But that's exactly what makes it so genuine.
The flowers won't last. The laundry will need doing again tomorrow. The trash cans will empty and fill in their endless cycle. But for now, in this moment between everything else, love has left its calling card. Ruffled and ridiculous and real.
Pretty much alive, after all.