blush /blʌʃ/ (n) 1. the hint of pink on my cheekbones, rose soft, the always there of it, the way it matches the satin trim on my blanket, the carpet in my bedroom, the way I sleep snuggled in it, tucked in, stuffed animal beside me, a goodnight kiss. I am just a child.

2. The bottoms of my feet. The color of my toes pressed barefoot against the sidewalk, the pinch of it. The way the brown and pink shades of me are different from the other kids at school. The way I notice my nose, my lips, my eyes, my sun-freckled cheeks, the sleek black of my long hair. The way they notice, too.

3. The pulpy sections of grapefruit that we sprinkled with sugar and ate by the spoonful. The leftover juice running rose-pink down my arms. The times my mother made rhubarb pie in the summer: we picked the blushing stalks in the backyard and sliced them into gleaming diamonds, watched them bubble up in the oven, sticky, tangy, sweet, delicious.

4. In my mother's bathroom, where my mother has tubes of it, little compacts, one small jar that she curls her finger in, places it in dots on her cheeks. I am so small, but I watch her, sit under the shelves by the hamper and look up, rummage through the baskets of makeup, not that many but enough. I poke at them, open them, smell them, powdery, flowery — they smell like her. I try them on my own hand in squiggles and smudges. I decide blush is my favorite color, if it is a color at all.

v. to blush - blush·ed; blush·ing. 1. A kiss and my cheeks go pink. Other first kisses, bad kisses, lips that get caught in teeth, nibbles, bites, flush, red, tears at times, the way the heart is broken. Kisses you won't love and kisses that you will and then the right kisses, all of them: first kisses and strawberry kisses and grandma's Filipino kisses — her nose pressed against my cheek, a sniff, a squeeze, a peck. I love you.

2. His kisses on the other side of the world, first on the doorstep of Via IV Novembre as he holds you and your body heats up, flush. He cannot see the color creeping in as you stand in the darkness, but your cheeks can feel it. You know the feeling, but this time it is in Italian. Amore mio. Your heart is an empty hallway, and you kiss him again.

3. It is in the small flowers of that first wedding dress, that crinkle and blossom, it is in the tulips in the bouquet, sleek and sturdy, when you walk across the cobblestones. It is in the peek-a-boo sunset that evening, as the rain stops. The strawberry shortcake that your mother sent you the recipe for, pink splotches on napkins from the strawberry juice. It is in the years that will come, their language, their voice, the first blush of them. The way you learn to love each other. The lost. The found.

4. And then the times you buy the same blush that she bought, finding it, brushing it against your adult skin in that shimmer and light, one single stroke, the same as hers was, the same looking in the mirror, the same uncanny resemblance and people calling you her name. She is gone. She is gone. You hear it and you know. Your skin goes pink. Your eyes do, too.

5. But one day you will be in the town of Fabriano with him, twenty years later, after everything and the world has changed and you are still here and you have lost everything except for each other. And the medieval city itself at sunset will pick up the pink of the sky, turn the stones shades of rose and peach and lychee. The fountain, the water as it gurgles and bubbles and falls. The churches with their brick façades. The cobblestones, the same ones you know. Rub your eyes. Squeeze his hand. Follow the signs, the color of your past forever in this space like a flower pressed closed inside a book and the way that, when you open the book, it is the flower page that opens first. A surprise, you almost forgot. And then you remember all of it, everything you lost, the all at once of it: the squiggle of blush on the pale of your hand, rhubarb red, pink grapefruit, yellow orange, your mother’s upturned smile. Light and dark, thin and fragile. Papery petals and all.