Poignant

Anyone who knows me knows I swoon at the mere thought of Shena Mackay and think she's the absolute bee's knees. Here is one reason why:

"'Oh, the wee soul!' Mother would cry, pausing to delay some bull-headed tom from his lustful or murderous purpose, or peeking into a pram. 'Poignant' was her accolade. 'How poignant,' she would murmur, looking at a bunch of evocative felt flowers at a Bring-and-Buy in a cold Presbyterian church hall redolent of her childhood; misty-eyed, she would pin the purple-and-yellow pansies drooping from green felt stalks to her coat. Needlebooks with clumsily pinked pages and embroidered violets, French knots, golliwogs with snipped topknots made from little skeins of wool, anything in faded raffia, a cut-steel evening purse, all qualified; poignancy was like charm, indefinable. A lavender bag might exude it, or a dolly's dress with heartbreakingly tiny smocking; while a pincushion, be it ever so lumpy and cobbled by small fingers, failed in its wiles. Being broken or ephemeral did not necessarily guarantee acceptance, nor gaudiness, as evidenced by red-and-yellow cherries on a hat or black rayon splashed with poppies, exclude. An elephant at the zoo could be as poignant as a mother-of-pearl button or a baby's tooth." From Dunedin

And then there's this: “The other day I came across a headline in the paper that said 'Tortoise Stabbed', and I thought, 'God, how horrible,' because I love tortoises. And then I looked again and realised it said 'Tourists Stabbed.' So that was alright!” From an interview conducted by Ruth Thomas for the online magazine Textualities

I think it's love.