I can’t tell you if I want to fall in love with one person. That information has not been disclosed to me. I once thought research would yield an answer, but the primary texts contradicted each other. I tried to follow the love lines across my palm, but I careened into a ditch. At that point, lawyers got involved, and now I find the road by driving.

I can’t tell you if I want to fall in love with one person, but I am not sitting on my hands. They are jazz starfish on my mother’s cheeks, trying to figure out how she becomes more beautiful over time. They are velvet epaulets on slumped shoulders, awarding the squeeze that says, “you are strong.” They are tassels on the ends of a hug and white doves released by prayer.

I don’t know if I will always live alone, but I will never be alone. I began falling in love before I could catch my balance. It appears there is no bottom. It is people all the way down. I am in love with the boy who climbed to the top of the monkey bars to sing “Here Comes the Sun” to the fourth grade. I am in love with the women who stitched my wounds like emergency response quilters, using Psalms and swear words for thread. I am in love with the gas station man who has kindness first tattooed on one wrist and a cyclops alien on the other. I am in love with Lin-Manuel Miranda. I am in love with the doctor who charms my blood glucose and tells me to listen to my life. I am in love with the Sunday school teachers who did not know how far their voices carried. I am in love with the teenagers who mop the animal shelter. I am in love with the grocery cashier who calls everyone “boss.” I am in love, which is the only way to get out alive.

I have questions pending about what I want, but I carry on wanting uninterrupted. I want people to think more highly of themselves after I have been in the room. I want one of those fat bug-eyed goldfish who look at you like they saw what you threw off the dock last night, but don’t worry about it, because they know a guy. I want to make oatmeal cookies that neutralize grief. I want to accept that things get dirty from proximity to life. I want to witness fogbows, sundogs, and other underloved meteorological phenomena. I want my mother to outlive me. I want to memorize all the songs in which DJ Khaled is present for moral support. I want to tend the fire. I want to thank the YouTube psychologist with the same wrinkled sweatshirt in five colors, using his ten fingers to count why everything will be okay. I want to keep my vision. I want to practice peace with citric surprises and horseradish days. I want to bless my body’s shotgun marriage to time. 

I can’t tell you if I want to fall in love with one person. God is good at catching me off guard. I once thought I needed an itinerary for my expectations. I tried to tell goodness and mercy the shortest directions to my house. But at that point, people got involved, and now I find bread instead of answers.