My face seems too square and my eyes too big, like I'm perpetually surprised, but there's nothing wrong with me that I can fix.

Neophyte, n. There are millions upon millions of people who have been through this before-- why is it that no one can give my good advice?

stanchion, n. I don't want to be the strong one, but I don't want to be the weak one either. Why does it feel like it's always one or the other? When we embrace, one of us is always holding the other a little tighter.

It will affect me in ways I can't even begin to get my mind around. This day is a dark crater. There is no room for songs. The songs are wrong. Every song is wrong. And I don't know what to do without music.

For I have never wanted a lover, but I have always wanted to love, and to be loved.

It doesn't have to be on Valentine's Day. It doesn't have to be by the time you turn eighteen or thirty-three or fifty-nine. It doesn't have to conform to whatever is usual. It doesn't have to be kismet at once, or rhapsody by the third date. It just has to be. In time. In place. In spirit. It just has to be.

And still, for all the jealously, all the doubt, sometimes I will be struck with a kind of awe that we're together. That someone like me could find someone like you --- it renders me wordless. Because surely words would conspire against such luck, would protest the unlikelihood of such a turn of events.