Complete it: Adolescent love is…

a heavy shower over impermeable ground that at once craves the rainfall but doesn’t know how to handle it, and so the shower becomes a downpour, becomes a frictionless, all-consuming torrent that overflows creek beds, smothers low-lying plants, floods homes, and sweeps away cars; it drowns everything in its path leaving only a beautifully destructive turbulence that will subside as quickly as it appeared, but will leave an indelible mark on all that it touched.

Complete it: When learning a foreign language, the chunks of grammar and vocabulary you acquire are, at first, analogous to

the 50 individual musicians in an orchestra warming up before the concert. Each instrument, each note, each bow and reed and mallet plays an essential part but needs to be practiced and flexed and radiated in its own way. One musician just plays scales while another has advanced to sheet music. Some musicians are oblivious to the melodies around them while others warm up in harmony. For a few minutes, or years, discord reigns. But eventually the conductor steps on stage and raises his wand, and then everything falls perfectly into place and the music you make transports to other magical, beautiful cultures.