Falling in love can be an isolating act, even if another person is present while it is happening. It’s all so interior, based on many moving parts and internalized messiness. It isn’t always like this, of course. But when it has been like that for me, I’ve come out of it happily exhausted, wondering why anyone would want to do this more than once in a lifetime. But, of course, when whatever love I’ve claimed fades, I find myself renewed, in search of the feeling once again. I have found ways to renew it even while still in love. Last fall, there was a point where I had a crush on the leaves, for all their twirling and kaleidoscopic showing off. I have a crush on the first few days of daylight saving time in either direction, when the sun does a real generosity and tricks me into staying out longer and later. Or, when it abruptly exits early, reminding me to bow to my true self. I have a crush on the way the familiar buildings of Columbus, Ohio, poke their faces through a puffy wall of clouds when I descend into the city after being away for too long, and it is always too long. I have a crush on too many sentences in too many books by too many people to name. Since I have already decided that sweat is romantic, friends, let me say that I also have a crush on the feeling of night air cooling the sweat off skin when a body pours out of a hot and packed space. I am beginning to have a crush on crystals, I think. Definitely obsidian, but perhaps a few of the others that look like miniature caves. And, yes, I have a crush on memories that were surely not as beautiful as I have made them out to be. Because that’s the whole trick. I’ve had crushes on all my friends, and if they don’t have one back on me that’s fine because I’m still going to text them at unfortunate and odd hours of the day with some useless miracle that I couldn’t possibly keep to myself. So few of my crushes speak back. I am cultivating my comfort with unanswered desires, and it is going well. I have room for so much more. I say a prayer. I fall in love.
