I love Rachel

I love your drawings, your art, your doodles on the side of notes

I also love your handwriting

I love how you appreciate nature: flowers and dogs and babies, and draw my attention to them

I love that you come to church with me, even if it's not a tradition embedded in you

I love that you make an effort to stay in touch with your mom and dad (and that you invite me to join)

I love when you put yourself out there, even if it's uncomfortable, even if it's just for me. I never care how bad you think you are; hearing you sing and watching you dance brings me such joy

I love that you love Notion as much as I do

I love warming my hands on you, your protests as we negotiate a mutually acceptable arrangement

I love marching down the hall with my hands on your shoulders

I can love when you push me to try new things that I'd never have done on my own: weed, gymnastics, dyeing my hair

I love that we climb trees together

I love your raw athleticism, the way you delight in moving your body and put in work to maintain it

I love that you share music and movies with me, while I share books and blog posts with you

I love our mutual challenges, starving ourselves for Lent, giving up sex before marriage

I love cooking together, the process of tuning our food until it's better for our palates than what a restaurant would serve, making a giant pot of curry or a pot pie from scratch

I love the times we spent apart, because they make the time we spend together all the more sweeter

I love writing for you, whether it be lists like this, or letters, or even just a quick Messenger ping to try to get you to smile

and I love reading what you've written, a peek into your innermost thoughts that you're too embarrassed to say outright

I love it when we tease each other, when we make fun of our mutual faults (your drug caffeine addiction, my inability to remember anything)

I love scrolling through my photos of you, allowing me to relive our time together in the span of minutes

I love your crooked tooth

I love that we get to spend the rest of our lives together

Always, I wanna be with you, and make believe with you, and live in harmony, harmony oh love