Black Licorice + Rose

Black licorice is Peace. The dark anise stillness of the black quality, a calm so total it tastes of something most tongues refuse on the first try. Rose is Love wearing its oldest perfume, the open pink heart the mystics kept pointing at.

The two seem like opposites. One is silence, the other is fragrance. Yet anyone who has gone far enough into union has found the place where the heart is most open and most quiet at once, where passion stops moving and becomes a dark, scented stillness.

The licorice keeps the rose from going sentimental. The rose keeps the licorice from going cold. What they make between them is the hush at the center of the act, the part no one photographs.