A Million Little Things

by Zoë Burleson

Love is sharing a bowl of popcorn. Love is giving my friend my old clothes and liking my old sweaters better on them. Love is watching your baby brother grow up through pictures.

I think, sometimes, that love is just myself reflected back to me. My mom takes one step right and I follow, and it kind of annoys her but I've always done it and I always will. So she keeps moving, and she lets me be an inch away. I always link arms while walking, and soon enough, my friends get so used to it that they pull my arm through theirs before I even think to.

Love is marching through snow after too many cups of sangria and laughing at the stars. Love is, “I trust you. I trust your judgment. I believe you.” Love is making fun of your friend’s ex-boyfriend in the group chat for about an hour. Love is, “you look like this cat” and it's the most bleary-eyed, worn-out, messy-haired, just-woke-up-looking cat you have ever seen. Love is, “I just hate to see you not feeling good.” Love is your name written in my diary, grooves and curves pushed through pages until it disappears from my mind.

Love is overwhelming. Love encapsulates everything and everyone. Love makes me feel more feelings even though love itself is a feeling, and I don’t know how to make sense of that, but I kind of love that confusion. Love makes me cry.

I associate love with that book I checked out last year from the library and couldn’t put down over winter break, A Few Thousand Words About Love. Now I name Spotify playlists and Pinterest boards and anything else about love after that book.

I feel love in music, when the strings and the bass and the drums and the voices all swell. I feel it in words, in all my favorite songs, poems, and books with broken spines. I feel it so much and it's almost unendurable, but I love it.

I love love.