Messy Love

Sometimes when I'm teaching English to my students from other countries, they'll come up with sentences or phrases that are grammatically incorrect but make the point beautifully anyway. And sometimes they put words together that any poet would appreciate.

Yesterday I was teaching my Eastern European students about opposites -- same vs. different, fancy vs. plain, smooth vs. rough. I asked them to write sentences using some of the words so that they could learn the meanings more clearly. We discussed the difference between the words "messy" and "tidy." Here's the sentence that my student Emilia came up with:

I don't like messy love.

I hardly knew what to say. It was so eloquent and the expression on Emilia's face said it all.

"Very good Emilia! I don't like messy love either," I told her. "Thank you."