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Ammon Shea is on vacation this week. Kindly filling in is Noa Wheeler, an Associate Editor at Henry Holt Books for Young Readers. She is searching for ataraxia.

I might as well say it: I’m having an affair. It’s been going on for a few years now—a secret, hidden obsession with the word “petrichor.”(the smell after a rain, especially on dry earth.) We take long evening walks, delighting in the after-rain musk that hangs around us like a shroud. We savor glasses of wine on the porch and pick mulberries from dripping branches. We choreograph delicate dances to avoid evicted earthworms.So imagine my surprise when, innocently strolling around the Internet the other day, I turned a corner and there was Petrichor—out with someone else. And making no discernible attempt to hide the transgression, no less! The betrayal was almost too much for me. I nearly fled.

But no. I am strong. I am resilient. I am stalworth, for goodness sakes, and I took a deep breath before reassessing: what do we have, Petrichor and I, that requires secrecy? What do have that necessitates monogamy? Nothing, really, merely a pleasant mutual history which might—just might—get even better with company.

So, Petrichor, this is the end of our affair. And possibly the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

That said, I think it’s time to reveal my other indiscretions:

Tohubohu.(chaos or confusion. )We are frenzied and unorganized together. We make a deliciously chaotic tofu dish called “tofubofu” and leave the kitchen a mess when we’re done.

Resistentialism.(the theory that inanimate objects can be hostile.) We indulge each others’ fears of the doorknob and the egg timer. We think the keys lose themselves.

Hypnopompic (pertaining to the semiconscious state before waking.) We are layabouts. We can’t open our eyes in the morning. We remain mired in strange dreams sliced into precise eight-minute segments by the malicious snooze button.

I am looking forward, now, to a promising future, one filled with new lexical acquaintances and exciting etymological adventures. But every once in a while Petrichor and I will slip off alone—old friends comfortable in silence—to spend some quiet time with our eyes closed in the rain-soaked air.

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