I fell in love a long time ago. I can actually remember the exact moment it happened. It was pushing midnight as I sat huddled up in my bunk bed. The pale pink and purple butterflies stared up from my blanket as the light from the hallway bled onto my notebook. At such a young age, I wasn't sure how I wanted my letters to look quite yet, so I tried several different hands. Slate the letters to the left. Maybe it will look the way I imagine the word tasting on my tongue if I slate it the words to the right instead. Alright, then it was time to transcribe.

My collection of words.

Every word that I wanted to collect, I did. If it was a word I didn't know, a word that looked tremulously beautiful on the page, a word looked horrendous on the page, a word that I heard once in conversation, a word that sounded silly in my head; all words were welcome in my collection. Once the word was written in the neatest fashion I could muster, it was then researched with the definition written promptly next to it. I always thought I was clever using the words I found in conversation afterwards, as if no one had ever heard of them before, as if I was the first to discover their meaning.

Words have always been a large part of my life. Although words are also one of the things that cause me the greatest trouble, I am absolutely smitten with them.

I am very much in love with them.

While my words continue to find their way onto different platforms, like the Odyssey, and move on to morph themselves through my poetry, fiction and even journalistic endeavors, I don't believe they will ever stop enchanting me.

"I have hated the words and I have loved them, and I hope I have made them right." - last written line by Liesel Meminger, The Book Thief