The best way to fall in love is to look at your lover, look back, and go “shit maybe I’m in love.” To slowly realize your life is cohesive with another life and those two things won’t be separated, not because of a notebook moment in the rain or a declaration or a ring but because that’s just not a fucking option, sorry.

The best way to fall in love is to get annoyed when your partner whines at you for doing something they literally always do but you never even said anything before and now if you do it will be a cop out so you sit there with an eye-twitch and say sorry and maybe hug and they walk away and your lips betray you with an- “I JUST THINK IT’S FUNNY”

The best way to fall in love is to make fun of each other’s parents and exes together. To only refer to them by first names, to know each other’s impressions based on the inflections they use. Tracy with a cocked head and a slow voice and Becca with a nasally bitch tone even though her voice isn’t nasally, she’s just a bitch.

The best way to fall in love is to get way too excited about tea and candles and be confident that your partner also prioritizes tea and candles.

The best way to fall in love is to dance when you suck at dancing and laugh on the kitchen floor, to make your ugliest faces possible and still want to rip that person’s clothes off later. And know that you’ll grow old, and still want to rip that person’s clothes off, but slower and with shakier hands.

To love is to have routine, but not boredom. To get excited about nachos. To get excited about travelling to a foreign country someday. To understand that those two things probably equal each other in excitement. And that’s not sad, because there’s consensus.

To name your future dogs, to dream up how you are going to have March Madness in your house, but not with basketball, with drag queens. And your small little babies will make brackets and be required to be knowledgeable of gay culture in all its facets. Those babies might be dogs or humans. Probably both. Definitely both.

The best way to fall in love is to look over one day, and realize it has been years but it felt like minutes, and feel your relationship like a fact. You have a mom, you have a dad, you have bills, you have a personality, you have hazel eyes, and you have your person.

The best way to fall in love is to not have to be unapologetically yourself because you were never asked to apologize, and to be yourself is to also be in love with another life. Your life partnered with another life. And it is just, neat.

Sometimes that love drools, snores, or kicks you in your sleep. Sometimes that love is so apparent and stops you in place and you do feel like it’s a scene in The Notebook in the rain or a declaration or a ring and that is a bonus. Sometimes that love pisses you off and wakes you up when you nap. Sometimes that love scares you when they forget to text that they are home safe. That love is your safety too.

The best way to fall in love is to let it happen, and write a poem about it, and to not read other poems and worry about complacency or comparison because this is your love poem, this is your love, this is your best way to love.

The best way to fall in love is to fall in love in a way.