I’ve got the friendliest crush on you—imagine me like a puppy who wants to play, who keeps on throwing toys at your legs.

If you’re a girl, I’ve got a big, fat, girl-crush on you and I’m not ashamed to say it. I’m falling for you.

I just want to talk. I want to talk about men. If you’re a man, I want to know what you think about other men. I want to know why you say “pussy” and why you knock each other down. I want to know what happens when someone can’t take it on the chin and move on. Do you cry? Do you even talk about crying?

Talk to me.

I want to talk about women. Sometimes I can barely bring myself to leave the house without makeup and I want to hear that echoed and bouncing off the trees so it doesn’t feel like such a shameful secret. I want to know what you’re afraid of. Are you afraid of things, like me? Being followed? Not being married? Not being able to rip open your heart any longer?

Do you sometimes skip a shower for the night?

Do you want to get a salad with me? I know I’m supposed to say “coffee,” but I don’t care and I can tell you don’t either.

I want to know if you’re a feminist and when you found out. I want to know if you have ever looked at yourself and if it felt like it was through a hall, a tunnel of mirrors when you’re imagining all the objectifying eyes. Are you comfortable labeling yourself? Standing up for yourself? Other people?

Can we run together? I feel better if I run. Do you?

I remember all the times I’ve ever talked about God, all the times I’ve ever talked about something I ardently don’t believe in. I remember everything you’ve ever said back. I find every second fascinating.

I want to know if you ever make faces at yourself in the mirror.

I want to do mundane things with you. I want to buy tampons with you and pump our bike tires together.

I want to have defining moments with you. I want to go back to that moment when I walked into your old apartment with an iced coffee from a café that’s now closed, when you grabbed my face and said “I. Am. In. Love.”

To the times you picked books off of my shelves like apples, like little rocks on the shore of Lake Erie.

Do you eat slowly? Will you be weirded out if I do? I need to. Especially if it’s pizza. I love people who like to order a whole pizza.

What about the time I thought we might have nothing in common? Can we go back to when you proved me very, very wrong?

What are your preferred instruments for doodling? Your preferred magazines for making collages?

I want to talk about sexuality and how we like to use it. I want to talk about the library. I find you so down-to-earth, I find that we come from the same planet.

The first time we hung out you lay down on my bay window and threw bang-snaps out the window. You said, “I wish someone would yell.”

Who is going to have a baby first? Get a dog? A house? Move away? We don’t want to go home. We don’t live anywhere.

I remember when we sang Defiance, Ohio right into the toilet bowl after drinking hillbilly jug wine.

When we were a lot younger, climbing mossy, stone steps.

I don’t care if we watch Grey’s Anatomy or American Psycho together, as long as we’re next to each other.

I find your presence comforting. All of yours.

I want to drink dirty, cheap alcohol although we’ll all get sick the next day. I want to make up dances and tell awkward, goofy secrets. When we’re sober I want to have potlucks. We have sayings that no one else understands. That’s powerful.

I want to kiss your forehead while we’re on MDMA for the first time and say, “you’re really something.”

We can smoke cigars in your room so the smell stays in there for weeks. Baroness is playing, and I’m headbanging like a dork. You’ve got smoke in your blonde hair. You’re the giggliest person I know.

We can ride bikes through the cemetery and feel alive down to our sweaty toes. We can talk about the books and the graphic novels that make us cry like babies together. We can talk until our frozen yogurt turns into soup.

I want to figure it all out together.

As long as when we’re with each other, we are, for once, not worrying.

As long as for the life of us, we can’t exactly say why we ever were.

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Ed: Sara Crolick