It was winter when we met and my favorite color became you. As the air grew colder, our toes intertwined to stay warm. The leaves echoed the color of your hair, and I saw you everywhere I looked. Hats and scarves were everyday necessities and your sweatshirt was my blanket. The frozen air was not a match to our flame. Your voice was now my music and your arms were my home. Sometimes, things just click. The key in the lock you didn’t know you were waiting to hear.

Now, when the sun rises, brushing the skies with its bright, vivid, cascading shades of orange, red, and yellow, as the earth begins its slow, gleeful, eventual thaw, as we forget and relive, as our hands grow numb, chilled by the winter breeze, the rising sun lights your hair, looking a deep shade of crimson, I will love you. I’ll love you a million times and I’ll love you another million.

I will love you with everything I have. I may never be able to tell you how I feel, but I will love you wildly and I will love you deeply. I will love you in a way that clicks in every step I take on the pavement. I will love you recklessly. I will love every little detail of you, from the way you push your lips together and inhale deeply as you begin to tell a story to the flaws on your skin. I will love you boundlessly and unselfishly.

My love for you is effortless. It fits me like my summer skin, glowing in your presence.

To the girls who are still looking for a life filled with surprise, wonder and joy:

Don’t withdraw from the world. Notice how many acts of love you can find wherever you look. Love was created to be intangible, enormous and meaningful. Love gives us purpose. Love has the power to alter us over and over. Love, big love, is inspiring. Don’t apologize for wanting life-changing love. Don’t settle for less-than-extraordinary love. Search endlessly for your best friend, for that “love you, even when I hate you” love. Wait for love that moves, love that acts and love that stops everything for you. Go after the love that astonishes you, but also the itty bitty love; the love that does your laundry and surprises you with lunch and comforts you when something bad happens. Expect the kind of love that is there for you every day, not because it’s easy but because that’s what love is. Yearn for love that trusts, that serves, that cherishes. Real love pursues. Real love can’t help but show itself.