On Becoming Love
decentering romantic love: in practice
Around this time of year I peruse sites for particular card designs, purchase strips of stamps, buy stickers in bulk, and collect updated addresses. All in preparation for what has become my annual mailing of Valentine’s Day cards.
Origin: in 2021, I was sitting in my apartment a few weeks after ending my six year relationship realizing I’d be spending my first Valentine’s Day without a partner. I must stress, I was not sad about this.
Rewind a little further: during the Covid lockdown in April 2020, I was in graduate school, living alone in North Carolina, five hundred miles away from my family. So I made the silly, seemingly arbitrary decision to start making videos about anime on Tiktok. I recorded myself yelling at my TV about media I’ve loved since childhood and found other people who loved the same things. A few months and a few thousand followers later, I am invited to a Discord server with about twenty women and non-binary content creators in the anime community.
Look, I know my generation was taught not to trust strangers on the internet. But god, am I glad I trusted strangers on the internet.
It was as though I’d been waiting to find them my whole life. We spent every day in that space, sharing jokes, accomplishments, sadness. If I’d known being my most full self would somehow lead me to the greatest loves of my life I would have embraced my muchness sooner.
That same summer, my grandmother injured her leg and I spent some time visiting home to see her, to help care for her in whatever way I could. The weight of the world aside, I felt oversaturated. When I asked my partner to carve out space for me in the pockets of time I had since we were long distance, he did not. I stopped asking.
Instead, I wrote something short in our sad-times channel of the Discord server one day and the outpouring of support was immediate. Unconditional. People I had known for less than a month were showing me a level of love I hadn’t realized I was missing. This is one of the most pivotal turning points of my mid-twenties. I leave my partner at the end of 2020.
I decided at the beginning of 2021 that I would send Valentines Day cards. I spent an entire weekend handwriting notes, personalizing sticker choices, and mailing out eighteen cards to my friends from all different parts of my life. Their messages and posts as they received them, as they realized I’d actually written paragraphs, brought me a joy I’d been wanting desperately.
In 2025, I mailed out fifty Valentines Day cards. This year, I haven’t compiled the whole list yet, but I know it’ll be more. How lucky I am to have so many people worth writing to. Friends who have received these cards every year since the first year send me pictures of their stacks, tell me how much they look forward to it. What I also do however, which is part of why the list grows as much as it does, is I offer it to everyone. I have my standard list, but I reach out to my communities at large and ask if anyone would like to get a Valentines Day card. I think the first time some people said yes and offered their addresses, they didn’t realize I really meant I’d be writing in the card. That’s the thing though, this is a labor of love for me and it doesn’t matter the depth or longevity of our relationship. If I’m sending you a letter on a day meant for love, I am sending you a love letter.
If we wait for romantic love to offer adoration, to offer devotion—are we not robbing ourselves? Love is not a finite resource.
I say all this now as though it is obvious, but it took work to get here. Yes, I met these humans and they loved me immediately. Problem was, I did not love me all that well.
After my breakup, I purposefully stayed single for a myriad of reasons. Last year was the first year I really dated, actively dated. I refer to the process as an emotional yo-yo. I’d finally felt as though I was opening myself up to the possibility of romance not as a way to fill a void, but as an addition to an already full life. At least, that was the theory. Turns out, you can theorize all you want about love but until you’re staring it in the face, there’s a whole lot of triggers you may not even know exist.
I made a lot of decisions last year: to actively date (final 2025 date count: 9), to pour into my friendships, to be a community builder, to put down roots because the concept of temporary was false, to say yes often, to say no often. Everything sort of culminated as the year came to a close.
In mid-October, I meet a silly boy that looks at me like he might actually consider staying. He is not the point of this story. I see him three times before I take off for a trip to Houston, TX with four of my best friends. I promise to send him pictures, we agree to plan a date when I return.
During the trip, we go to the Texas Renaissance Faire, Houston’s fall festival, a $40 Korean day spa, and a T-Pain concert (the genesis for the trip).
The night of the fall festival, we are soothed from the spa, we take pictures with pumpkins and my good camera. After, we walk down the nearly empty streets of downtown Houston and I trail behind my friends. My whole body swells as I look on at them, as the realization hits me that there was a point in my life where I genuinely believed I would never have this kind of love again. The tangible kind. I try to fight the tears. Walk slow and blame the block heels. One of them turns and sees me, I know they know immediately but I deny it at least twice before I cannot deny it at all. And then, there on a street corner across from the parking garage, I am wracked with sobs that will not cease. They hug me and all I can say is, I love you. I love you all, so much.
The day after I fly back to Pennsylvania, another best friend drives three and half hours from Virginia to spend a final night with me before she reached the point of pregnancy where that was impossible. I leave her instructions and a key while I’m at work and she’s on the way. When I return to my apartment she’s taking a meeting on my couch like she belonged there. In the evening, I make her thai chicken curry. I henna her belly for her maternity shoot. We watch Nobody Wants This, we laugh and I remember the first time we met in person and the lunch at that hibachi grill where we laughed so hard, and so loud, everyone in the restaurant turned and looked at us. Asked for whatever we were having. I knew before then, but in that moment it was cemented, she was one of my soulmates.
That night she sleeps in my bed with me and I feel like a kid having a sleepover. In the morning I make her french omelettes with mushrooms and parmesan, turkey bacon, toast, fruit. I reheat the chai I saved her from the night prior’s batch, I pour orange juice. We sit and eat and I do everything I can to memorize the moment. Later in the morning I take her to a second breakfast, because why wouldn’t I? French toast, crêpes.
Before she leaves me, there’s a package on the doorstep. Author copies of my newest chapbook. I get to sign and give her the first copy. I wait until she leaves to cry because in the aftermath, is about the loss of my friend Emma, to suicide in college. A grief that carves caverns out of me so much so I didn’t know if I’d ever find people to love me that way again. And yet.
In the background of all of this, the silly boy has faded and so I ask him if he’d changed his mind. He answers to say, in short, my confidence, my surety, my happiness with myself and my life made him feel insecure. A different version of me might have argued, begged even. But I’d just come off of one of the most loved weeks of my life. In that moment my theory, the one that said I want romantic love not because I’m trying to fill a void but because I want to add to my already full life, actualized.
I’d gotten two poems out of my time with him. Giggles, kisses, memories. Someone asked me if I regretted it, showing love to someone it didn’t work out with. I said no. Never. I will always risk pain for the possibility of love. I will always show love if it is within my capacity to offer it. I will never regret choosing to be my most full, most loving self in every interaction I have. What another person chooses to do with that love, is up to them.
I had this realization last fall that the anxiety I once felt about whether or not the people I loved wanted to hear from me, was an anxiety most of the people I loved also had. So now, here we were, playing chicken about our care for each other. In this, we both lose. I am in a place now to make that first move. The call, the text, the voice note. Sometimes I send a touchstone to say, I love you, I’m thinking of you, I’m cheering you on always. Sometimes it doesn’t get a response, but that’s okay. That’s not why I do it. In the same way people talk about having to learn the communication patterns of a partner, we also have to do that with our friends. Our communities. I know who wants the podcast length voice note. Who wants me to call them when I’m driving. Who FaceTimes to body double and have each other’s mundane life soundtracks coexist. There are friends I talk to multiple times a week, and there are friends I talk to once a year.
In December I attended a wedding of a friend I had not seen or spoken to beyond a handful of times in nearly seven years. Still, he invited me to his wedding. It was in Boston, which was about six hours from me. My father kept asking if I should really take that trip just for one night, especially going alone. But the thing about this friend is that we experienced Emma’s suicide together in college. There was a point in time where the concept of happiness, of domesticity, or normalcy, seemed unreachable. So, for a future to exist in which they were marrying the love of their life—nothing was going to stop me from witnessing it. I had attended and written a poem for another friend’s wedding two years prior who also went through this loss with us, so something in me just had to go.
And when the ceremony started, I realized I hadn’t heard his voice since he got on testosterone because the moment he spoke into the microphone I nearly wept. He was his fullest self, being loved reverently, and loving, reverently.
For New Years I went to Charlotte, NC with the same group that took on Houston. We stayed in one of their apartments, got to meet her new partner. And I find myself again, standing in a crowded bar after the clock struck midnight into 2026, telling her how happy it makes me to see her love and be loved, with tears in my eyes. NYE morning she made us breakfast in her apartment. On New Year’s Day, another friend makes us collard greens and turkey and black eyed peas, and all I feel is warmth. Our last day in town, is a birthday where we all make wishes for our birthday girl. I had asked everyone to send me their wishes for her in advance so I could write them down and gift them to her. I also collected wishes from friends who would not be at the dinner, and overwhelmingly the wishes overlapped in a way that felt like a collage of adoration. And I cried reading them to her.
Hummingbird hearts are two thirds the size of their body. I think some days I am more hummingbird than human. I found a notebook from high school where I wrote, Everyone I have ever loved will leave me. If we’re talking semantics, then yes. There is death. And yet. I repeatedly say these days that I will find my beloveds in every lifetime after this one. A threat, actually.
I spent so much time thinking I needed to fall in love with one person. That I needed one person to love me. But just because you can hold a heart in the palm of your hand does not mean only one person gets to keep it. I write a lot about filleting my heart, using it as an offering. I was raised to believe that love is worship. Love is devotion. I first bowed at my grandmother’s feet and I seem to not be able to do anything less.
Sonia Sanchez wrote, “Don’t never go looking for love girl. Just wait. It’ll come. Like the rain fallin’ from the heaven, it’ll come. Just don’t never give up on love.” Which is not to say love of any kind is not still a concerted effort, but only that you should never have to beg anyone in life to love you. I have not met everyone I will love or who will love me in this life yet, and what a gift that possibility is.
My point I suppose is, be the love you want to see in the world. Text the friend you miss that you haven’t spoken to in a while. Learn the names of your baristas and cashiers and custodians. Write someone a letter. Introduce yourself to your neighbor. Keep notes of people’s favorite flowers, fruits, colors. Build your own bouquets.
Become love, and perhaps all the universe will be left to do, is return it to you over and over and over again.
Until Next Time Beloveds,
Jess
2026 Aspirations
Instead of resolutions, I went with aspirations (feels less restrictive)
Read at least two books a month, ideally one per week
Craft or create at least twice a month; paint, scrapbook, DIY project
Turn my second bedroom/office space into a reading room (this is a year long project)
Schedule in no-plan weekends because we are prioritizing rest!
Try one new recipe a month!
Lover Girl Life Stats:
Reading: for colored girls who have considered suicide/ when the rainbow was enuf by ntozake shange (I’m in a local production of this next month!)
Watching: Heated Rivalry, Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood (annual rewatch that starts during the holidays),
On Repeat: Therapy by Anjulie (okay, Indo-Guyanese artist??? I’m in love with her), and here’s this month’s playlist which counter to everything in the above newsletter … is a little rage filled, enjoy: drown, boy.
New Recipe I’ve Tried Recently: littleneck clams (only $8 for a bag???) in a white wine sauce over angel hair: shallots, garlic, olive oil, salt, red pepper flakes, parsley, sauvignon blanc, clams, squeeze of lemon, butter, pasta of choice (I used this recipe for an order of operations and ingredient list, but I don’t actually follow measurements for anything ever)
Hyper-fixation/Project: building gallery walls all throughout my apartment!! I’m actually deeply obsessed with my living room even more than I already was
Flowers used for the bouquets in my apartment currently: red & yellow carnations, baby’s breath—actually, the bouquet on my entrance table is a purple variety bunch I added baby’s breath to and I genuinely don’t know what those flowers are but they’re pretty (buying and arranging flowers for my apartment is one of my self love practices)
Titles of poems written in the last month: another retelling; doomed love (a comfort); foresight; false god
Openings & Opportunities:
Bucknell Seminar for Undergraduate Poets 2026:
June 7-14, 2026 | Fully funded & free to apply
Visiting Poets: Airea D. Matthews & Chet’la Sebree. Director: me!
Application due January 31st, 2026Philip Roth Residence in Creative Writing:
Open for Fall 2026 & Spring 2027 | Fully funded & free to apply
Applications due February 1st, 2026
Open for Submissions: Bloom in Color, fifth wheel pressRecent & Upcoming Whatnots:
December 27th: new poem, “Birthright” out in wildness
January: new poem, “Good Luck, Babe” in Shō Poetry Journal No. 8
February:
From Beloveds:
Upcoming & Recent Releases:
The Book of Alice by Diamond Forde
Force: A Choreopoem by Monica Prince
The Hungering Years by Summer Farah
Obsidian Sun by Tyler Auston Jones
To Support:
Change Campaign Call to Action: SAVE IMMIGRANT FATHER FROM DYING IN ICE DETENTION IN CHICAGO [direct donation link here]
Community Care GoFundMe: a local member of my Lewisburg community was in a debilitating accident in November and has not been able to return to work since then. He has extensive physical therapy ahead of him so we are trying to support however we can!Logistics:
Diaries of a Lover Girl will go out on the 15th of every month! Occasional updates may be released regarding workshop openings as necessary. Any major schedule changes will be communicated. If you want to support me by becoming a paid subscriber, I will send you a hundred virtual hugs (and also bonus content). <3
My heart is full reading your writing and I thank you for your existence.
Love love love this! You shall be receiving a physical valentine from me, my friend 💘