I’m fluent in many languages: mine, yours, and the unspoken ones we use to spell love. I’ve written you notes in all of them.

I was blessed with lips and you were blessed with a waist and it would be such a waste not to put them together.

I’m good at making excuses but I can’t stop the blush, the insufferable flush, when you wrap your hands around me. My mouth is a liar but my body is a traitor: it always gives my heart away.

This could work or this could hurt so you’ll have to be brave and I’ll have to be strong. A happy ending takes more effort to conquer than a tragedy, and more courage to hope for.

They know what your smile looks like but I have felt it pressed against my skin. They have heard your laughter but I have been the cause of it, time and again. This isn’t a competition or a game, but aren’t I the winner anyway?

On Sundays we yearn deliciously, a devastating amount

To say someone’s name just because you miss them and you like the way it tastes on your tongue (and other tiny clues of love)

There’s a type of affection born from years of knowing someone so well you can tell what they need from a look. The casual comfort of a hand on your back or fingers patting down a stray hair, flicking your chin in a practiced tease. Knowing what to give and doing it with ease.

‘I know you’re jealous,’ you say, a little too pleased. ‘But you don’t have to be.’ I’m too stubborn to reply with anything but a frown. ‘I know where I belong. I’m right where I want to be.’ The corners of my lips curl with an involuntary smile as your hand lands on my knee.

I won’t tell you I love you but there will be signs (I’ll say something silly just to make you laugh)

You run your fingers through my hair as if you were touching the petals of a flower, marvelling at the softeness. I understand why people die for this feeling. Why they live for it.

This week was exhausting. I need to eat something delicious and be kissed on the neck.

If only time could go a little slower for us. There are so many things I still don’t know about you. There is so much left to love.

I wonder how you feel about me all the time. You wonder if keeping your distance will keep those feelings in line.

You were talking and I was listening, I swear, but my mind got a little lost in thoughts of you. Like the way your mouth moves and how it would feel against mine if I were brave enough to try to steal a kiss or two.

No need to go out on Halloween. You’re already such a treat and I know so many tricks.

Slow burn friendships are a special sort. It takes a while for love to take root, for affection to grow. But once it does, it does not stop until the branches are tangled up like vines and you don’t know where one ends and the other begins.

‘I hope you never fall out of love with me,’ you say, as if it were something possible, plausible. But how could I? Why would I, when love is as much chance as it is choice and I make mine every time I look into your eyes.

This is the kind of love that lingers. Three lifetimes from now I will pass by you on the street and the smell of your perfume will make me pause, turn. The sound of your voice will make my hands shake, reach out. My memory might not remember but my soul will never forget you.

This Halloween you should let me bite you. As a treat.

I drew a line called off-limits and then danced along the edge, every touch a close call, every tease a near miss. You drew a line and called it friendship, but friends don’t look at each other like this.

Some people wear their heart on their sleeves and that’s why they make a habit of reaching for what and for who they want. Others wear their feelings on their eyes and that’s why their gaze softens when they look at the one who makes their heart melt.

Autumn is for the hopeless romantics because hearts are just like leaves: they fall.

Somewhere along the line I tripped over you and my heart fell on your lap and ever since then I have not been able hold eye contact for longer than three heartbeats without giving my feelings away.

Because I can’t always wrap the gift of your waist with a bow of arms, I’ll slip a ring around your finger, kiss your knuckles and let my lips linger; just another way to say ‘this is mine.’

I like the way affection changes the way you say someone’s name. You shorten it, sweeten it, change it into something else, something glazed with honey that drips adoration as it spills from your lips.

“Just” friends, as if friendship could ever be just anything. As if it doesn’t run soul deep, carved into bone like initials on a tree. As if it doesn’t have the power to save you or bring you down to your knees.

I get jealous and it looks like this: me vying for your attention, dying for a reaction, trying my best to steal a little of your time without letting out a whine.

Words get stuck in the back of my throat so I have to use my eyes. I love you through looks.

Because I am not too proud to beg but I am too stubborn to give in without a fight, I will get on my knees and ask for your heart but only after carefully teasing and tearing your willpower apart.

There are other ways to spell love. A whispered ‘You did well’ when you get home after a long day. A ‘You look great’ first thing in the morning as you rush out the door. The occasional ‘You’re so good’ and the constant ‘I’m so proud’. I hope you hear it every time.

Home is a feeling. It’s safety and comfort. It’s the smile that welcomes me home and it’s the space I occupy when I’m wrapped between your arms and sat between your legs.

Love is actually so humiliating. All that blushing, stuttering, giggling. A heart on its knees, too enamoured to be embarrassed.

You own no part of me but the space you take up in my heart and in my thoughts. Which is to say: all of it.

Never judge a book by its cover, never assume a heart’s wants from what the lips say. Appearances can be deceiving; that’s why I pretend to push you away even as the look in my eyes spells ‘stay.’

I like casual touches of love, the kind that become a habit. Like a hand on someone’s leg, restless fingers that drum a beat against their thigh, or a loose hold on the back of their neck, the swipe of a thumb over warm skin, making shivers run down their spine.

To be like clay in someone’s hands, moulded by a touch: chin titled upwards, jaw pinched between eager fingers, nape held by a possessive touch, waist wrapped tightly, hair tugged gently. To be made anew by fire, the kind that burns from within.

My fingers reach for you like a plant leaning towards the sun. It’s your warmth I seek; you’re the brightest thing I’ve ever seen.

It wasn’t love at first sight but it was recognition at first conversation, familiarity at first touch. It was realising I had spent my whole life missing something I didn’t know I needed. It couldn’t have been anyone else after that. There won’t be anyone else after you.

‘If we do this,’ you say, leaning in, ‘we’ll be crossing a line we can’t uncross.’ But there are no lines left to cross because our threads have been tangled all along, pulling us closer and closer to where they belong.

What happened to dedication? To devoutness? To eternal devotion? I was not made for casual, I was made to peel my heart like a tangerine and feed it to the one I love for dessert.

You slayed the monsters under my bed, got rid of the ghosts haunting my head. You chased my loneliness away; I didn’t ask for a saviour but you came anyway.

You think you’re a better kisser than me? Prove it. Put your lips on mine, I’ll be judge of that.

My lips betray me all the time, every time I catch myself smiling at you without meaning to. Who gave them the right?

One look was all it took to realise it was all mutual: the fondness, the affection, the desire. The stubbornness, the exasperation, the unwillingness to give in. Mutually lost in this love, mutually scared of it not going the way we hope.

It doesn’t take long to borrow someone’s habits, to copy their expressions and mirror their gestures. They say you are what you eat but I think you are who you love.

Fighting with you is such a pointless act. I can never stay mad long enough to matter; one look and it’s over, one smile and I’m gone, one kiss and I’ve forgiven you, forgotten everything else.

As my final act of love I’ll annoy you until you loosen the grip your troubles have forced you to keep on yourself.

‘You should teach me how to flirt,’ you say, and I can’t tell if you’re joking or mocking me. But I can’t hold my liquor and I’m already drunk on the sight of you, so I say, ‘You don’t need lessons. Whatever you’re doing worked just fine on me.’

If hearts could speak their mind without our lips censoring the words, mine would get me into so much trouble. How often would it call out for what it wants? How often has it already let my secrets spill with every stuttered word, every mention of your name?