Close your eyes and imagine yourself in a dimly lit room.

Are you alone? Is someone with you?

Maybe it’s that someone who has been sticking to your brain like an old memory deep-rooted and covered in caramel. Maybe you’re thinking of their hands and how they smell like vanilla lotion; the gentle lightness of their smile; how poetic their laugh sounds bellowing from their gut; their lips; if their mouth tastes like a tangerine.

Maybe it’s that someone who makes you feel something different, something good. You start to have faith in the science of attachment and longing and you believe in the magic of love.

There’s a softness to the way they look at you and how you move, like the fascination of watching clouds float. It’s their eyes and how they make you believe in past lives, reincarnation, soulmates, good people. This is when you start to think that maybe the crinkles by their eyes are a metaphor for something. That when they look at you, they really see you.

If you’re thinking of someone right now, hold on to that thought. If they make you feel good, keep them close. If they hold you when you cry, if they remember the little things you say about your favorite candy and the way you take your coffee, if they make you believe in something beautiful and that all the heartache and longing was worth it–tell them. Tell them all of this.

Tell them how you feel when you feel it: how you never really believed you would find a love like this until you met them; how you understood, now, why people write poems about hands and mouths and honey; how a home can feel like a person.