love = paranoia

I fell in love when I was driving home in the dark after a long day and a love song was playing softly on the radio, and the lyrics made me think only of you.

When I spoke your name aloud, and I wasn’t quite sure why my cheeks grew heated and my stomach tightened and the words “my friend” didn’t sit exactly right in my mouth, especially when your name felt so very right.

When a casual “I love you” was interjected into our conversation, and my heart seemed suspended in time, unable to beat, and when I went back to re-read those words later I wanted to suspend them in time too, wanted to immortalize the moment forever. 

When it occurred to me that you had become the last thought on my mind as I fell asleep at night, echoes of our words still playing in the back of my thoughts, just as you were the first thought on my mind when I woke up and wondered why it felt so lonely to be empty-handed.

And during some midnight hour when we were laughing over something you said “Stop it, you idiot, I’m stupid and fall in love easily”, and in what may have been the only brave moment of my life, I answered, “I do too, let’s do it together.”