Love and Devotion

Dear lovie,

I have such intense feelings for you. I always tell you how different I was before I met you, how I was running from love, how I thought I couldn’t handle it. But when I met you, my heart caught fire. I’d never felt such a strong pull towards someone. Even when I thought I couldn’t “do the whole gf thing,” I had already made the decision to love you.

You know I’m serious about how and who I love. Loving you has been a transformative, borderline religious experience. I’m serious about making time to see you, even if it means riding a Flixbus for hours during finals. I’m serious about making you happy with a cute text or by buying you the perfect film camera. Most of all, I’m serious about planning a life with you, and I can’t wait to finally move in together next month.

For me, love and devotion are the same, and I spend everyday at the altar of our love. You know I’ve been grappling with religious trauma for years now, but I’m at the point that if loving you was really a “sin,” I’d take hell proudly. No hell compares to an existence without you. I remember telling you that one time my junior year while we hugged late at night outside of my NYU dorm right on Union Square. As we embraced against the stony building, I said that connecting with you — being in your arms — makes me so happy to exist and how that feeling keeps me going no matter how bad the war in my mind gets. When I'm with you, I am my best self.

When I look at you, it’s like the protective stone of my heart softens. You tell me about how much you love my eyes, but every time you look into mine I’m already lost in yours. I love playing with your locs, hoping with every physical touch I can materialize just a bit of my full heart. I can never get close enough to you. I always want more. Maybe that’s selfish, but I want you in ways that transcend the physical. I doubted love before you, but as my favorite Mitski lyric reads, “I love everybody because I love you.” I love you Niko, more than anything, more than anyone.

Yours forever,

Vezra

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Edited by: Cecilia Innis

Find Vezra D. (they/she) on Instagram at @vezuniverse

Find Cecilia Innis (she/they) on Instagram at @cecilia.innis