14 Love Songs Elizabeth Jacobson Above a pond, I sit on a wooden bench and throw pebbles into the willows. A rush of sunlight and wind creates a path in a channel of water, dances between the melting ice and brown islands of bulrush. The resident osprey, its eyes the color of yellow grass, follows my tossing hand. Love is a diorama of inner life in an outer world. I look down and find a chunk of fossilized rock with an entire Paleozoic shell sticking out. I am not afraid of love, but terrified of how it is my steady guide. [...]