gadabout, n.: At what point do you start to feel you’re living from drink to drink? You’re not there yet, but you may slip there soon.
gain, v.: Understanding of yourself and understanding of the world come hand in hand with understanding the person you love.
gait, n.: You stride like you know what you’re doing, but I can see the waver when you come to an intersection you don’t yet feel is yours.
galaxy, n.: As many words as stars, as many thoughts as spaces between.
gall, n.: Nobody has the right to tell another person who to love. True love is never a dictate or an obligation.
gallant, adj.: You make me want to open doors for you.
gallery, n.: Only when you link them together can you see how images capture time, and how time captures us.
gallivant, v.: Let’s skip over the need for sleep and let the bubbles hang in the air a little longer.
galore, adj.: We should all want a love galore, an ever-abundant variety pack spilling out of its boxes.
galumph, v.: Without coffee, I return to Neanderthal form, and you stand aside as I push through the kitchen and grunt.
galvanize, v.: My will is powered in part by you. Even if I don’t want to do it, I will do it if I see you want me to.
gambit, n.: There were nights I pretended my roommates were around, just so we could go to your place instead.
gamble, v.: The minute you choose to gamble with trust, the odds turn against you.
gambol, v.: You stride toward me like it’s the first day of spring, which I know means there’s something good you want to tell me.
game, n.: Along the way you piece together some of the rules, but you never get to see the full board.
gamer, n.: I’m not jealous or anything, but I will point out that Grand Theft Auto will never love you back.
gamut, n.: You don’t have to run; it sometimes cycles past you in a single string of thoughts. You stand still, wondering where you’ll land.
gape, v.: Sometimes being too open can cause someone else to be too open in a different way.
garbled, adj.: The words tumble and twist around one another as they come out of my mouth; I need you to unwind them, to know I mean well.
garden, n.: We will survive under the frost.
gargle, v.: I love your ritualistic peculiarities.
garish, adj.: The times we have highlights are usually our lowpoints.
garland, n.: I’d rather have this than a halo.
garrulous, adj.: The more you drink, the more expert you become on everything besides gauging my reactions.
gaslight, v.: Some nights I wonder if this is all a trick, that one day I'll open the door and find you laughing at footage of my stupidity.
gasp, v.: The body speaks before the mind kicks in.
gatecrash, v.: Love crafts its invitations, but the savvy suitor knows how to get inside without one, the unexpectedly welcome guest.
gatekeeper, n.: You are the only one who holds the key to yourself.
gather, v.: The comfort and consolation of bringing your friends close
gauge, v.: I wear my fear on my cuticles, my joy in the corners of my mouth.
gawk, v.: I try to avoid the MTV meltdowns, because reveling in others’ misfortune draws me away from my own empathy.
gay, adj.: Synonym for happy.
gaze, v.: It’s as if your eyes have become a source of light. The rest of the room has fallen dark.
gazillion, n.: When considering love, it is important to realize that something can be imponderable and yet still exist.
gear, n.: Me: “I don’t want to date someone who buys hiking boots and then never leaves the city.” You: “What are hiking boots?”
geek, n.: You used to hide your oddities under your bed, but now you wear them with pride.
genealogy, n.: I want to be so happy at my wedding that even the most reluctant ancestors would dance for us, wherever they may be.
generalization, n.: A too-easy way to see a much more complicated world.
generate, v: The welcome of your warmth on a chilly night.
generation, n.: Our love is shaped by our time.
generic, adj.: Don’t say to me all the things that other people say. I want words that are crafted, not manufactured.
generosity, n.: The mingling of patience and kindness and sacrifice, doing unto others better than you would do for yourself.
genesis, n.: There's no single moment I can say was the first time I loved you. It was a gathering of moments that added up to become love.
genius, n.: Be smart enough to know that you can't be smart about everything.
genre, n.: I often want my life to be a romantic comedy, which is quite romantic of me, and often leads to comedy.
gentle, adj.: Sometimes I need you to be a reassuring whisper.
gentleman, n.: Possessing a manhood that’s carved by consideration, not a desire for control.
gentrify, v.: You cannot remodel me into a hipper version of myself. I am, at heart, an old neighborhood.
genuine, adj.: When you expose the flaws in your own words, because you know they are the best approximation you can give.
geography, n.: Ultimately the lines drawn upon us aren't as important as the ones that naturally occur. We are the world as seen from above.
geology, n.: The upper layer is skin, but the deepest is rock. Sometimes you make it feel like a boulder, sometimes a gem.
geomancy, n.: The first time I saw the inside of your apartment, I tried to read it for signs of our future.
geomorphic, adj.: I love the crags of you, the isthmuses of you, the promontories, the slopes, the subtle striations.
geophagy, n.: Love can make you feel like you are eating earth, and it can also make it so that you can somehow survive on dirt.
germane, adj.: What you say when I’m not around matters just as much.
germinate, v.: You were not the seed or the soil. You were the rain.
gerrymander, v.: Positioning pillows so that half the bed really becomes a third.
gerund, n.: If we wanted to be most true to its meaning, we would not call it love, but loving.
gesticulate, v.: When you argue, your hand karate-chops the air in front of you, as if it wants to show that it's on your side.
gesture, n.: You offer me the last piece of everything, including yourself.
getaway, n.: The farther we get from the city, the less the city gets to us.
geyser, n.: Your explosions come in such a predictable pattern that I imagine I could sell tickets, if I thought anyone would want to watch.
ghastly, adj.: You say you’re dressing up as the person you could've ended up being, because that’s the scariest costume you can think of.
ghost, n.: What you see when memory takes a shape.
ghostwritten, adj.: Sometimes I feel like I am a hollow vessel for someone else’s words; their passage fails to ground me.
gibberish, n.: Half penguin cold awake, mother half mother! deadline ostrich truth, talking strawberry in your inkjet sleep.
gibbous, adj.: You don’t see all of me, but you see more of me than you don’t.
giddy, adj.: Our heartbeats accelerate, and our lives are accelerating too, out of the shallows and up to the helium heights of joy.
gift, n.: All I want is your time and attention. No need to wrap it.
gigantic, adj.: "When I was little," you confess, "my one aspiration was to make the biggest rubber-band ball in the world."
giggle, n.: The laugh that escapes like a child running from a classroom.
gild, v.: The sunrise filters onto you through the blinds, and I momentarily lose my breath.
gimcrack, adj.: Our love looks strong enough to bear the weight of our foibles, but what if that’s merely a veneer?
gimmick, n.: Bombarded by advice on how to keep the spark, we must remember that love is not advertising, just as advertising is never love.
gird, n.: Wear too much armor and you won’t be able to move at all.
girly, adj.: I refuse to think of this as an insult or a diminishment, because most of the girls I know are awesome.
gist, n.: It’s complicated, but I love you.
give, v.: Not the opposite of take, but it’s complement.
glacial, adj.: You think it moves slowly, but look how fast the ice falls when the glacier breaks.
glad, adj.: Thankful on your behalf.
gladiator, n.: I need you to help me fight off the lions of doubt.
glamorous, adj.: We’re suckers for cigarette smoke in an old movie, from the lips of a dame know knows too much, but should know better.
glance, v.: It is more than just seeing. It is seeing with intent, a connection looking to find its other end.
glare, v.: The alarm has gone off inside of me and I am trying to get it inside of you too.
glass, n.: Every time you see through me, it renders me more breakable, so take care with how hard you press your palm.
gleam, v.: Let us shine from the corner of the eye, the unblinding glimmer, dazzling companion.
glean, v.: I live among the sidenotes of your history, but only read them when I feel I have to.
gleeful, adj.: The right song comes on the radio and we play it even louder than our memory of it, so we can be within it again.
glib, adj.: The dismissive twist in your tone, amplified by my complex inferiority.
glide, v.: Let’s take a holiday from being concerned, and instead be weightless in each other’s company.
glimpse, v.: There is nothing so tender as looking at you and seeing the person I am going to be loving forty years from now.
glitch, n.: What you’ve just said has stood itself between my synapses; I do not understand why I am unable to understand.
glitter, v.: I love it when you shine, if only for an instant.
gloat, v.: When one lover, despite knowing better, can’t resist the opportunity to prove the other lover in some way diminished.
glom, v.: In a crowded party, I tag on to you like a Sherpa, even if the only thing I carry is your ever-heavier resentment.
gloomy, adj.: We all have to be the Eeyore at some point.
glorious, adj.: My happiness is usually a steady hum, but there are moments with you that require trumpets.
glossarist, n.: The topic at hand is love, and thus the words are plentiful, if hard to collect, since the emotions swirl them so.
glossolalia, n.: We each speak our own language, largely recognizable but every now and then plunged into a deeply personal obscurity.
glow, v.: In a person, a visible manifestation of love or the anticipation of love.
glower, v.: When your expression turns into a gloomy flower, wilting from disdain.
glue, n.: I want you to stick with me without thinking you’re stuck with me.
glum, adj.: The mood after we not-quite argue, leaving me not-quite sure and not-quite right.
glut, n.: I can only take so many emotions at once.
glutton, n.: Actually, you compulsively avoid punishment, devouring the near-misses and digesting them as innocence.
glyphic, adj.: Sometimes words create the picture. But other times the words themselves are the only picture you need to understand.
go, v.: This word wastes no time making up its mind.
goad, v.: I provoke you in the mistaken, temporary belief that I have to knock down your mistaken, temporary wall of silence.
goal, n.: One of the posts is individuality and the other is togetherness; the aim is to get it right in between, past the keeper of doubts.
goatee, n.: I would never do this to you. We both can live without a patch of goatishness.
gobble, v.: When I behave like a turkey, I often want to eat my words.
godsend, n.: Ultimately, it doesn't matter to me how you got here. It’s that you’re here.
gold, n.: Of course it can stay. It will last a long time beyond us. It’s not just a matter of the light. It’s a matter of metal.
golden, adj.: The subtle thread sewn through life, the vein of wonder that is always there but only sometimes visible.
gone, adj.: The irrevocable death of presence and sound; the inevitable birth of absence and echo.
goner, n.: I never want to be so far gone that I don't realize you're almost gone.
gongoozler, n.: This is what you become if you don’t take charge of your own life.
good, adj.: You should choose this so much that it no longer feels like a choice.
goodnight, n.: I want the last words I hear to be yours.
goof, n.: Not all screw-ups are harmful. Some need to embraced by humor, until they dissolve in its lightest of grips.
goofball, n.: Tends to bounce rather than roll.
gorge, n./v.: Feed so much on the drama inherent in misery and you will soon find you’ve created a chasm between yourself and reality.
gorgeous, adj.: A luscious kind of beauty, jazz-dazzling in its magnetism.
gormless, adj.: When you leave your phone at home and realize you’ve forgotten how to live life unaided.
gospel, n.: The song I can sing with the most conviction is my love for you, and my love for this imperfect world.
gossamer, adj.: Even the most slender of connections can be beautiful if seen in the right light.
gossip, n.: Communal hearsay; an attempt to take your story away from you; not to be heeded.
goth, adj.: You do not wear black on the outside because you’re black on the inside, and thus will never qualify for this adjective.
gourmand, n.: You can discourse for at least forty minutes on the pros and cons of various cupcake establishments in the city.
grab, v.: I will never drown in you, but when drowning, you may be the thing I reach for.
grace, n.: The wherewithal and peace you need to bring to love, and that love brings to you.
graded, adj.: The longer we’re together, the more it feels like essay questions – no more of the true/false of our early days.
gradual, adj.: The knowledge that love is going to happen can be instant, but love itself takes time.
graduation, n.: You're not smiling for me; you're smiling for the camera. I see you as you were, and feel fondness for all you don’t know.
graft, v.: We don’t have to have a kid. Our DNA entwines in other ways – by building our lives together, we build a life together
grail, n.: “You can go your whole life looking for a cup,” you tell me. “Or you can just drink from whatever’s around.”
grammar, n.: What matters is that I know what you mean, not that you followed the rules to the letter.
grandeur, n.: We feel a certain satisfaction when we don’t order the cheapest red on the menu.
grandstand, v.: Parade all you want, but remember that no one wants to stand watching a parade for more than an hour or two.
granitic, adj.: You can’t build a skyscraper, a cathedral, or a relationship with just any stone. You have to find one that weathers well.
grant, v.: I will make sure you are not alone in your wishing.
graphic, adj.: [use your imagination here]
graphologist, n.: It scares me to think that you could fall in love with someone before seeing his or her handwriting.
grapple, v.: Of course we must wrestle with love. It has so many moving parts.
grass, n.: As we lay there, time slowed to the speed of the blades gently rising, no longer able to push us, only welcome us to stay.
gratitude, n.: More elemental than thankfulness; what happens when the deep longing inside of us suddenly flows the other way.
grave, n./adj.: You cannot bury me while I’m still alive.
gravity, n.: Love is a force that grounds us without us having to feel its weight.
gray, adj.: Some sink into blue while I tend to wade into gray. It’s still a color, but an uninspiring one.
graze, v.: You think that words can only scrape the surface, but if there are enough of them, relentless, there will be no surface left.
greater, adj.: There is no such equation as the sum of our parts. Love adds imaginary numbers and makes us more than mere addition.
greed, n.: In love, it’s the emotional hunger that makes me want to devour your time, your attention, your active affection.
greenhorn, n.: No matter what stage of love you’re at, there’s always something that will make you feel new at it.
greeting, n.: Over time, we’ve shifted from “hello” to “good morning,” from “hi” to needing nothing but the sound of your voice.
gregarious, adj.: The intersection of your sense of humor and your sense of daring, often amplified by alcohol or sex.
gremlin, n.: The inner trickster that doesn't want us to think things can go well, and tries to prove itself right through sabotage.
gridlock, n.: You run straight through caution and we find ourselves stuck. You curse. I think it’s your fault. We aren’t going anywhere.
grief, n.: Everyone goes through it, but still it’s so specific. We lose, and don’t even have the consolation of losing in the same way.
grievance, n.: When I applied to be your boyfriend, I was given no indication of how much overtime there’d be.
grifter, n.: When I get paranoid, I try to reassure myself that the thrill of fooling me isn’t as powerful as actually loving me.
grim, adj.: It’s not seeing the end coming; it’s feeling that the end happened a while ago, and you’re just now cluing in.
grimoire, n.: Words conjure.
grin, n.: A smile can have premeditation, but when you grin, I know it’s coming from the same place as a look of shock.
grinch, n.: “Something about mass cheer brings coal to your heart,” you say. “And that brings me joy.”
grind, v.: I don’t know which is worse – to stand on the sides and watch, or to be on the dancefloor and the subject of your gyrations.
grip, v.: You don't change the subject so much as make it slide out of my grasp. It's still there, but it's fallen beyond my reach.
grizzly, adj.: 6:30 a.m., no coffee.
groan, v.: 6:25 a.m., no coffee.
grocery, n.: Eventually you know which kinds of cereal the other likes, a consumer intimacy built over many baskets.
groggy, adj.: Hit the grog too hard and the grog will hit you back. You won't lose your marbles, but they'll be shaken.
groom, n./v.: I am afraid of it because it feels like the kind of role that every hair to be in place.
groove, n.: The LP tells us -- love can't be a smooth passage. Without the irregularities playing with the path, there won't be any music.
gross, adj.: I am reminded of the toothbrush incident, and have to remember to ask if, ten years later, he still finds it wrong to share.
grouchy, adj.: After a while, we learned to get through each other’s terrible, horrible, no good, very bad days.
grounded, adj.: Am I in trouble, or am I just preventing us from blowing away?
groundling, n.: It's okay if you don't like the things I like, but you have to dislike them for a good reason.
group, n.: I was intimidated by the communal mind and communal memory of your pack of friends.
grovel, v.: Love should never fall to its knees.
grow, v.: In love, you don’t just mark your growth with a line by the doorway. You take that pencil and draw doorways instead.
grudge, n.: “I barely even dated him,” you say, and instinctively I know his version would be more bitter.
grumble, v.: The hiccups of guilt and protest you make when you don’t want to do something but are going to do it for me anyway.
guarantee, n.: “I will never break your heart,” you said, and I thought, no, you should never say such things.
guarded, adj.: My fear tries to keep my secrets locked down, but my hope keeps slipping you the key.
guardian, n.: The most important thing is to learn to protect yourself.
guess, v.: To take all the things I know about you and bet that they’re true.
guest, n.: It was like having an extra person lean over the side of our rowboat; we weren’t going to sink, but everything was off balance.
guffaw, v.: Most of your laughs rise from the chest, but every now and then I get one that comes from below your knees.
guidance, n.: Talking me through the dark to get to the answer rather than simply flipping on the lights and saying, “Look-- there it is.”
guile, n.: Your schemes against others backfire when I contemplate you trying them on me.
guilt, n.: I know you feel bad and I want you to feel bad a little bit longer, until I feel better.
gullible, adj.: You can’t fool anyone into thinking it’s not in a lover’s dictionary. From experience, we know that it is.
gunshy, adj.: Whether you pulled the trigger or were on the other end, the impact of the end always makes the next relationship hard.
gush, v.: The lancet of someone else’s talent breaks through the skin of my self-conscious reserve.
gut, n.: Why do we say that instinct is kept in the same place where bile is stored?
gutterball, n.: “If we can’t have kids, then can we at least have a flamingo?” you ask, as a way of bringing up kids.
gypsy, n.: What if love is meant only to stay for a little while, then move on? What if we are trying to force it to go against its nature?
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