The Lover's Dictionary by David Levithan

that when it came time to roll them up or pack them away, they would never be seen again.
    I told you this, and you suggested that we go for a beginning instead of two continuations. Why try to angle together the wall souvenirs of our new-to-New-York lives, when we could invent new hieroglyphs to represent us? The lamp could stay and the lime-green couch could continue to park itself in front of the TV, but the postcards would be mailed into drawers and the wreath my mother sent last Christmas would be shown another door.
    And this is what happened. We both took it as an opportunity to peel the wallpaper from our lives. The only thing I kept out were the photographs of my friends and family, placed on a wall with photographs of your friends and (less so) family on the other end, as if they were meeting for the first time, still too shy or wary to mingle.

viable , adj.
    I’ll go for a drink with friends after work, and even though I have you, I still want to be desirable. I’ll fix my hair as if it’s a date. I’ll check out the room along with everyone else. If someone comes to flirt with me, I will flirt back, but only up to a point. You have nothing to worry about — it never gets further than the question about where I live. And in New York, that’s usually the second or third question. But for that first question, where it still seems like it might be possible, I look for that confirmation that if I didn’t have you, I’d still be a person someone would want.

voluminous , adj.
    I have already spent roughly five thousand hours asleep next to you. This has to mean something.

W
    wane , v.
    The week before our first anniversary, I thought, I can’t do this anymore. I was shopping with Joanna, shopping for you, and suddenly I couldn’t stay in the store. She asked me what was wrong, and I told her I had to end it. She was surprised, and asked me why I thought so. I told her it wasn’t a thought, more a feeling, like I couldn’t breathe and knew I had to get some air. It was a survival instinct, I told her.
    She said it was time for dinner. Then she sat me down and told me not to worry. She said moments like this were like waking up in the middle of the night: You’re scared, you’re disoriented, and you’re completely convinced you’re right. But then you stay awake a little longer and you realize things aren’t as fearful as they seem.
    “You’re breathing,” she said.
    We sat there. I breathed.

whet , v.
    You kiss me when you get home, and when I kiss you back longer, harder, you say, “Later, dear. Later.”

woo , v.
    I told you that it was ridiculous to pay thirty dollars for a dozen roses on Valentine’s Day. I forbade you to do it.
    So that day, when I went to pay for lunch, what did I find? In my wallet, thirty singles, each with roses printed on it. I imagined you feeding them through your color printer. Oh, the smile that must have played across your face. I had to ask the woman behind the counter to take a quick picture of my own smile, to send it right back to you.

X
    x , n.
    Doesn’t it strike you as strange that we have a letter in the alphabet that nobody uses? It represents one-twenty-sixth of the possibility of our language, and we let it languish. If you and I really, truly wanted to change the world, we’d invent more words that started with x .

Y
    yarn , n.
    Maybe language is kind, giving us these double meanings. Maybe it’s trying to teach us a lesson, that we can always be two things at once.
    Knit me a sweater out of your best stories. Not the day’s petty injustices. Not the glimmer of a seven-eighths-forgotten moment from your past. Not something that somebody said to somebody, who then told it to you. No, I want a yarn. It doesn’t have to be true.
    “Okay,” you say. “Do you want to know how I met you?”
    I nod.
    “It was on the carousel. You were on the pink horse, I was on the yellow. You were two horses ahead of me, and from the moment you got in the saddle,