Like This

Love is like a house fire— not the kind that starts in the kitchen from something careless, but the kind where the whole structure was built from flammable material and all it needed was the right afternoon. Grief is like an airport. You keep arriving at the same terminal, sure you've been here before, but the gate numbers have changed and no one can tell you where your flight went. Joy is like a dog who doesn't know you're coming home. The door opens. The world becomes unbearable with happiness. Anger is like plumbing— it runs through the walls of every room and you only notice it when something bursts. Loneliness is like a hotel. Everything works. The bed is made. The towels are clean. But no one left a note on the pillow. Hope is like planting something you won't live to see bloom. You do it anyway because the soil is there and your hands still work. A simile says this is like that. But what it really says is: I couldn't explain this feeling directly, so I built a small bridge to something you already understand. Every simile is an act of faith— that your experience and mine overlap somewhere in the middle.