• a person holding a pink heart shaped piece of paper

    I won’t call it love if it isn’t

    So it’s Valentine’s Day — a day I’ve grown estranged from, as if it belonged to a language I once spoke fluently and have since forgotten. I scroll past the declarations, the curated tenderness, the proof-of-love posts by couples, and feel an involuntary irony rise in me. Just wait until the blindfold comes off, I think. Not cruelly but with the weary realization of someone who has mistaken dim light for dawn before. It isn’t that I don’t believe in love. It’s that the loves I’ve lived inside have always come up short — reaching toward me, but never quite arriving. I wasn’t always like this. There was a time…

  • Is It Love?

    Are your palms sweaty? Is your heart racing and your voice caught within your chest? It isn’t Love, it’s Like. You can’t keep your eyes or hands off of them, am I right? It isn’t Love, it’s Lust. Are you proud, and eager to show them off? It isn’t Love, it’s Luck. Do you want them because you know they’re there? It isn’t Love, it’s Loneliness. Are you there because it’s what everyone wants? It isn’t Love, it’s Loyalty. Do you stay for their confessions of Love, because you don’t want to hurt them? It isn’t Love, it’s Pity. Are you there because they kissed you or held your hand?…