Against the Blue of Longing, the Proximity of Green | Angelina D’Roza

Japonica grips tight to its little leaves, a bottle of Chartreuse held to the light. Japonica leaves like small print, details. Parakeet-green pieces of torn paper shaking in the wind. To recognise Japonica is to know it again, as though something laid down in memory surfaces with its flowering, a cluster of pink pressed between pages, and now, years later, recovered. This is all I wanted to say, the simplest thing about love, that it is possible to know a stranger again, the calming vanilla of old books, a name unearthed, the stem preserved.