You make me happy. I wasn’t sure if that’s what it was, at first, but that wasn’t your fault. It was only because I wasn’t used to the feeling. I felt my shoulders unclenching and my face softening into a smile and I thought, “What is this? What’s happening? Am I turning into a werewolf or a fly or a blueberry?” But then, it kept happening. It happened when I touched you on your back at that bar and asked you to leave with me and it happened when I woke up and you pulled me closer to you and tucked my head into your arm and it happened when I watched you giggle at a movie and offer me your popcorn. And I thought, “Is that what this is? Could I be… happy?”

You make me happy to talk to. I like when you call. I like when you text. I like when you email me just to respond to some silly joke I’ve posted. I like when we argue. I like when you tease me. I like when I make you laugh. Your smile is a surprise every time I see it — it cracks onto your face like it shouldn’t be there and my heart lifts and takes flight like a little duck making its first attempts at leaving home. I want to jump into your gorgeous, lovely, elusive smile and float on my back in a lazy river inner tube as the heat kisses my limbs. Your smile is everything — and I mirror it and my face feels fresh and new and hot. You make me sweat in that good, humming way — like after a particularly buzzing and relaxing run.

You make me feel like the cheesy Wal-mart symbol — a bouncy, yellow face, all doped out on being with you. Dropping prices like a maniac because who cares when you’re so freakin’ happy? I’d give everything in the store away for free and denounce a capitalist society just to run out into the streets and proclaim my joy. We’re all addicts, but I need the warmth you give me. Even in the dark, you are the constellations in the black sky, the campfire in the woods, the firefly against the glass of the mason jar.

You make me have little cartoon heart-eyes. You make me feel like I’m swimming in a crystal teal pool with bright yellow sunlight beaming down on me. And the sun is smiling and wearing sunglasses and maybe giving a thumbs up to a sunflower, who is also rocking shades. You make me feel like sweet sugary candy that leaves sticky imprints on a little kid’s eager fingers. Like sugar matted to plump cheeks. Like golden juices from biting a kiwi or a watermelon. You make me feel pink and flushed. You make me want to spin around and watch glitter cascade off my skin, floral skirt flapping in the soft, clean wind.

You make me feel like my face is going to split, like my teeth are too big for my ever-widening mouth. You make me hopeful like a neon green bud poking through a sizzling city sidewalk. Cue the fast-forward and the bud grows into a bursting violet flower, reaching its tendrils up, up, up to the pressing daylight. You blind me to the end. You fill my world with your smells and my caresses and the sound of you breathing — in sleep beside me, in movement beneath me, and the sweetest: in my ear.

You make me feel like vanilla ice cream cones and long summer walks and cool ocean water and icy, delicious beers and hands cupped together, wrists touching, noses nuzzling at hairlines, lips on the crinkle beside your eyes. You make me feel like little kids in rainbow bathing suits jumping in chaotic sprinkler systems across fresh green grass and like a cresting wave bumping the sandy shoreline. You make me feel like fun and polka dots and loud Spanish music and life.

When you look at me, I mean, really look at me — eyes open and brown and focused — and you smile, really smile, like I’ve just done something wonderful and worthy — it’s the newest, the brightest, the happiest.