@loversdiction is a continuation of The Lovers Dictionary by David Levithan-- these are my favourites

• abide, v.: It’s not a question of whether our insecurities, our desires can live together. It’s a question of whether they can make a home.
• absurd, adj.: You pass out on the couch, a near-infant in an adult’s body, snoring. And what do I do? I love you.
• anodyne, adj.: At times your love seems crystalline at its core; there’s no softness in it, but there’s the comfort of indestructibility.
• apparel, n.: There are times I don’t mind doing the laundry, because folding your clothes reminds me of the shape of you.
• aside, n.: I like the way you set the never set the alarm for a nice, rounded number. I am always waking up at 7:04 or 7:19.
• backscratcher, n.: “If God didn’t want us together,” you say, “why didn’t he make it possible for us to do everything by ourselves?”
• backstage, adj.: I love it when I walk in while you’re getting ready, and you’re nervous, as if I’ve never seen you getting ready before.
• balderdash, n.: I’m trying to get you home and you say, “You’re on my spleen!” so I say “You shouldn’t leave it out!” and we both laugh.
• banter, v.: When there is a lightness in the language, the lives temporarily follow suit.
• behoove, v.: “It would behoove you to ready the horses,” I say, and you reply, “I’m not behooven to any man!”
• bogeyman, n.: The person hiding under the bed, keeping me awake, is the version of me that I know no one will ever love.
• bolt, n. and v.: The noun stays, the verb goes. I feel we all have that potential, to shift our meaning because of the way we’re used.
• bombard, v.: When you use “I love you” to prove something, it proves nothing but your own desperation.
• border, n.: I am always making sure to keep enough of me away from you, in case of emergencies.
• both, adj.: With one simple word, we are joined - and yet it still acknowledges that we are two. This is my ideal.
• bramble, n.: Poor prince, to go through so much and to have her only remember the kiss, which is, let’s face it, the easy part.
• brilliant, adj.: I also love how you call the sky brilliant, the moon brilliant when it’s beautiful, as if giving credit for the design.
• brink, n.: There will come a time when I will either stop loving you or I will stop believing that you can love me
• building, v./n.: These solid structures we trust so much could really just be verbs, the constant act of their own creation.
• bummed, adj.: The disappointment leaves you that much poorer, so your mind goes wandering the streets, looking for warmth or maybe home.
• buzz, n.: Nothing intoxicates me quite like words, especially the times when you say all the right ones, and mean them.
• cabaret, n.: It's you in the kitchen, singing without the radio on. I hover in the next room, not wanting my delight to interfere.
• cacophony, n.: Insomnia comes when my thoughts are full of too much noise, with no logic to sort them into silence.
• cajole, v.: I know my moods are hard to read; I'm not fluent myself. Ask me to risk something, and it's anyone's guess what I'll say.
• calamine, n.: I want you to be the thing that covers up my mistakes and makes them stop itching. Which is a lot to expect from a lover.
• calendar, n.: I need you more in January than I do in June.
• call, n.: When I'm away, I still want you to be the last voice of the night.
• callow, adj.: You hold onto a fanciful notion that socks have lives of their own, which is why you leave them wherever you take them off.
• callus, n.: I want to develop that second dull skin, so used to your carelessness that I am impervious to it.
• calvary, n.: When I am trapped in an awkward corner, you know to come over and throw in the conversational crowbar that will set me free.
• camouflage, n.: There are still times at work when I feel I am playing dress-up, and then I come home to you and no longer feel ungenuine.
• campus, n.: Site of your youthful glories; I see it only makes you feel older, a bell that's still heard, but is no longer a bell.
• cancellation, n.: We love our friends, but we also love it when plans fall through, and we're given the gift of open time.
• canon, n.: I am skeptical of your love of Salinger; the world will disappoint you, because you want it to disappoint you.
• canopy, n.: We draw the sheets over our heads, let the the sunlight create a white cotton cloud for us to smile within.
• canthus, n.: I spy your look as I push you away; I am expecting contempt, but when I see confusion, I slow down, let you back into the field.
• capable, adj.: It's the double proof we look for, that we are able to love someone that much, and inspire that much love in return.
• cape, n.: In your underwear, blanket over your shoulders. I smile at the inadvertent superhero pose, and your smile back is your superpower.
• caper, n.: A co-worker asks how we met; you say, "We were both trying to steal the Hope Diamond. Serendipity to try at the same time."
• carapace, n.: Sometimes I want to build the shell around us both, and sometimes I only want it around me.
• cardigan, n.: "It's like wearing high school," you say, and I marvel that it's known you so much longer than I have, without unraveling.
• care, n.: This is the core of it, that I want your happiness, your safety, your success just as much as I want my own.
• careful, adj.: Tell me the truth, but tell it to me with kindness.
• caregiver, n.: Fear of the future is no reason to stay together, but I'll admit it's there, not wanting to be alone at eighty.
• cartography, n.: None of the lines in your palm are long enough. I trace a line from there down to the sole of your foot for our future.
• cassette, n.: This was how I discovered music could be magnetic, and that the magnetism could be shared.
• castaway, n.: "You're the one I'd take to a desert island," you tell me, "even though neither of us can fish, hunt, or cook."
• castle, n.: Build as big and ornate a fantasy as you want; if you're living there alone, it'll only make it seem emptier.
• casual, adj: The best way to say "I love you" isn't with trumpets or profound silence, but with the steady, normal soundtrack of a heartbeat.
• casualty, n.: We are not allowed to make out anymore while something is in the oven; too many dinners have been unmade this way.
• catch, n.: That tremor in your voice is the real you, pulling against what you're saying, wanting me to know it's still there.
• catharsis, n.: Why do you think I write all these things down?
• cathedral, n.: We want our love to last, but we don't have hundreds of years to build it.
• catnap, v.: Stealing slumber on a Sunday afternoon; finding the sunny spot on the sheets and staying there, time evaporating.
• caution, n.: You are unprepared to be alone.
• caveat, n.: I often disappoint myself, so I am bound to disappoint you.
• celestial, adj.: We drive north, past the light-shadow of the city, to sit in awe at the sheer depth of the universe.
• cellular, adj.: Sometimes it feels that you've won me over on the most basic level, that even when I want to go, the body votes to stay.
• center, n.: I push and push to find out what's at your core, afraid that when I get there, it will be written in a language I can't read.
• cereal, n.: I am more likely to have it for breakfast and you are more likely to have it for dinner.
• ceremony, n.: Of course I think about it sometimes, all of our friends watching as we write our love down in gold.
• chair, n.: Such a part of love: sitting in separate places, but at the same table.
• challenger, n.: I am always aware when someone catches your eye for longer than a blink, as I fall into the periphery.
• chance, n.: If I give you one, am I taking one?
• chant, n.: If I say your name enough times in my head, it becomes a sound. Sometimes the sound is holy, and sometimes it's just noise.
• chapter, n.: I wish my romantic history had a table of contents, so I would know how many pages we're going to share.
• char, v.: I find flavor in the damage.
• charade, n.: Three word phrase. First word "I." Third word "you." Despite your movements, second word unclear.
• charismatic, adj.: You could fill an ocean with all the free drinks you've flirted yourself into.
• chase, v.: There's no doubt that you will always be the one ahead, and I either have to learn to love the pursuit or step away from it.
• chaser, n.: What if I'm the beer and someone else is the whiskey?
• chaste, adj.: The delectable desire of being in the crowd and wanting each other badly, conveying it in the scantest of touches.
• chemistry, n.: We say it's a matter of chemistry, but isn't chemistry as likely to produce toxins as it is charge?
• chiaroscuro, n.: There is such a contrast between the good says and the bad, between my highs and lows. I wish I could blur the shadows.
• chic, adj.: You insist that it's French for "you look foolish."
• chicanery, n.: You manipulate the words and expect me to move along with them, as if I am the marionette to whatever truth you create.
• chimera, n.: I find myself alone in a pure, invulnerable moment, and wonder if the next moment will find me waking up.
• chivalrous, adj.: The pregnant women always find it amusing to see us compete to be the one to give up the subway seat.
• choosy, adj.: My friends called it high standards when I said I'd rather be alone than be with someone who wasn't better than being alone.
• chore, n.: It must take strategy on your part, for me to be the one who always changes the toilet paper.
• choreography, n.: I prefer to believe we make our own steps, but every now and then there's a moment that feels plotted.
• church, n.: We lay on our backs and steepled our fingers together, creating a small, holy moment where no prayers need to be said.
• cinder, n.: Even when I try to cool myself to you, there's a part that remains on fire, and will remain so even if we're no longer together.
• circulatory, adj.: Why does the hurt last longer in my system than the euphoria? Is it my nature to be so unsettled?
• civil, adj.: We're both so bad at disguising our fury; if I ever turned to you and saw a polite veneer, I'd know all was lost.
• claim, v.: I know I should say that I want to be yours, but really I want to belong with you, not to you.
• clairvoyant, adj.: It's the most everyday of sixth senses, the way I can read your answers before they're said aloud.
• clarification, n.: You think that loneliness is something that can only happen if we're apart, but that's not true.
• clasp, v.: As you heave with sobs, as the world splinters into your skin, I reach around your back and hold on.
• classic, n.: A romance is a romance because it ends at the beginning. We don't want to see the next forty years of Elizabeth and Darcy.
• classy, adj.: You slip the cigar ring onto my finger. "Do you know what that means?" you ask, then answer, "It means I smoked a cigar."
• cleave, v.: Rocks don't split at random. There is a weak spot in the solid-seeming surface, and if enough stress is placed there, it breaks.
• cliche, n.: It should really be "heels over head." When you leave me head over heels, I'm just standing there.
• cling, v.: If you sense me holding back, it's often because I fear my own neediness, and don't want you to fear my neediness as well.
• clinical, adj.: "What's wrong with us?" I asked, and if you'd answered with a detached diagnosis, it would have been over.
• cloistral, adj.: There is always the suspicion that it might be better to leave the world and stay in it at the same time.
• closer, adj.: So come on.
• clumsy, adj.: The drunker you get, the more likely you are to drop things, like bottles or chips or my expectations.
• coagulate, v.: It is a dangerous thing, this thickening of affection; you want it to have weight, but not to be an immovable burden.
• cocoon, n.: I have to believe that if we spend enough time wrapped up in each other, we will emerge together, more beautiful than before.
• codependency, n.: How strange that society tells us we must pair off, then defines this word as harmful.
• coefficient, n.: Yes, the books on your shelves acted as the reference I needed to know it was right to be in your apartment.
• coexist, v.: This is our bare minimum, and sometimes it's enough. To be in the same room, and to feel there is room for us both.
• coffee, n.: I asked why you drank it black, and you said, "Let's not kid ourselves. It's the same thing as gasoline."
• cohabitation, n.: It's the silly, tender way I see the two toothbrushes perched there looking at each other, and think of them as us.
• cold, adj.: You leave the room right after sex, and I lie there and shiver, feeling used and awful.
• coleorhiza, n.: We forget that roots are fragile at first, and need protection as they gain their grip in the ground.
• collaborate, v.: Work with me, here.
• collage, n.: This is how my memory works, as I add images haphazardly, torn raggedly from life and glued in, not quite straight.
• collarbone, n.: When I hear that God is in the details, I think of the smoothness of your collarbone, the desire I keep there.
• collateral, n.: You get the firsthand effects of all my secondhand damage.
• collocate, v.: I want to be two words that are often paired. I want to have my own meaning, but also have you always associated with me.
• color, n.: My blues are deeper than yours. Your reds are fiercer than mine. Our greens regard each other with suspicion.
• come, v.: alone, away, as you are, together
• comfort, n.: It's the steady presence of your breathing, the familiar traces of your warmth, the nearness of you, one small movement away.
• comical, adj.: If you didn't think life was funny, I don't think I could take the thought of life with you seriously.
• comma, n.: Is this the effect we have on each other, the power to force a pause, but not to end the sentence?
• commiserate, v.: You can't console me if you are the cause for consolation.
• commune, v.: To feel enormity, and to know you have a place in it.
• compatible, adj.: There is an alleged consistency in this word that does no actually exist in real life.
• compensate, v.: To brighten your charms because you fear that your weaker self will show beneath.
• complain, v.: To tire of your own voice, even as you are using it.
• complete, v.: I wanted her to say, "You don't complete me. I was meant to be incomplete."
• complication, n.: I can deal with anything you throw me, as long as I'm not being played.
• compliment, n.: You don't even have to be in the room to make me smile.
• compose, v.: To tame yourself into articulation.
• compute, v.: The site said we had 78% compatibility; later you would tell me it's the farthest you've ever made it with a C+.
• con, n.: Romance is the realm of the trickster, and only sometimes do I feel like I'm in on the joke.
• concerted, adj. I can see you assembling the orchestra of excuses, the soloist of regret, ready to perform this latest effort of yours.
• concession, n.: I acknowledge my own fallibility, and that it's not separate from who I am, no matter how much I treat it like a third party
• concise, adj.: This is why "fuck you" always works, because it pierces through the vagueness.
• conditioned, adj.: I could never truly love someone who isn't nice to waitresses.
• confound, v. : "It's an eggcup," you explained as I held it up, thinking some mouse had left its cereal bowl in your cupboard.
• confrontation, n.: You turn away from the truth when asked to face it, while I stare at it too long, until it becomes a blur.
• confuse, v.: In the dream, you ask me to pick love out of a police lineup, and when I do, you say, "No, that's the idea of love."
• congratulations, n.: You have steered yourself to the end of the day without crashing.
• conjure, v.: echo of cigarettes; the magazine left open by the side of the bed; your soap; the dog-ear on the page of the book you lent me
• conniption, n.: I need you to calm down and check your pockets before you say you've lost anything.
• connive, v.; I may have known, that once, that I had a cold when I kissed you. I may have thought a sick day with you would be nice.
• connotation, n.: I knew I was in for it when saying your name to someone else filled me with such incantatory delight.
• conscience, n.: It's not about how you sleep at night; it's the days that should be harder when you fail someone you love.
• conscious, adj.: I am right here. Right here.
• consequence, n.: I cannot be the answer to all the damage in your past, only the alternative.
• considerate, adj.: This is the first thing to consider, when considering who you want to be with.
• consistent, adj.: A heartbeat speeds and slows and, like love, its value is not in its clockwork steadiness but in its life-giving nature.
• consolation, n.: It should not feel like a prize.
• conspicuous, adj.: "I love you" is not meant to be an advertisement. Those who wear it too loudly tend to mean it the least.
• constancy, n.: Always be true to me by always being true with me. When I falter, lead me from my doubts with a steady certainty.
• constellation, n.: Like the evershifting sky, your body yields surprises to me, tiny markers I have never noticed, designs within designs.
• construe, v.: I must remind myself that you look at others because they're interesting, not because you're interested, and that I do it too.
• contact, n./v.: We all have that touchpoint, the place we reach for without knowing it. For you, it's my wrist. For me, your shoulder.
• contagious, adj.: Starve a doubt, feed a hope.
• contempt, n.: You only despise me when you're drunk, but I have to wonder whether it's a layer added or a layer revealed from underneath.
• context, n.: I have never been in love like this before. I never allowed myself to want it. Because I never thought I would get here.
• contraband, n.: I engraved the birthday flask with the phrase OBJECTS IN THE FUTURE ARE CLOSER THAN THEY APPEAR.
• contradictory, adj.: I didn't know how to explain to you that I loved you so much that I wanted to run away from it.
• contrariwise, adj.: "Yes, I lied," you tell me, "but that does not make me a liar. I tell the truth much more often."
• contrite, adj.: I lie just as much as you do.
• convenient, adj.: Love, I've found, works on its own schedule.
• conventional, adj.: To belong in a convent.
• conviction, n.: I find you guilty of believing in your side of the story a little too much.
• copacetic, adj.: Neither of us is agreeable by nature, but sometimes we give the guards the day off, and allow ourselves to foolishly grin.
• cope, v.: The only mechanism that can help you is your own mind, and it needs to be convinced.
• cordial, n./adj.: If they are going to name a drink after this adjective, they should limit you to just one.
• corduroy, adj.: Not the smooth silk or the starchy wool or the purr of velvet. We want the comfort, the well-worn, to be who we are.
• core, v.: I fear I am hollow.
• corporeal, adj.: There are times when I'm kissing you that I feel released from my body.
• corporeity, n.: In moments of extreme happiness, I cannot help but think, "I exist. I am here. This is happening."
• correspond, v.: Write me long letter and I will love you for it.
• corruptionist, n.: This should go on your business card, because my qualms have no chance against your greater persuasions.
• cosmopolis, n.: I can't imagine any other backdrop for us than this mad, indifferent, interfering, wondrous wallop of a city.
• cost, v.: I get trapped by "do or die" when really it's just "do or don't."
• counterbalance, n.: When I am weight, you are lightness. When I am lightness, you are weight. We cannot both be weight at once.
• counterfeit, adj.: You go through all that trouble to fake a smile; it's like an artist spending hours to make a dollar bill.
• counterintuitive, adj.: When your intuition is to go against your intuition, all bets are off.
• country, n.: Of course, it is a privilege to live such ruminative lives.
• courageous, adj.: It takes courage to put things to rest, and even more to allow yourself to rest after they are gone.
• cover, n.: I will answer the phone and tell your mother you're not here.I will be the white lie that shields you from the darker ones.
• cowardice, n.: By writing this down, I know I will not have to meet your eye. But it's the only way I can release a more truthful version.
• cozy, adj.: Breathing beside one another.
• crack, n.: Growing up, there was a crack in the ceiling over my bed. I must remember it takes a lot of cracks for a house to fall apart.
• crapulence, n.: This is actually a word for when you drink too much. Someone at Webster's has a sense of humor.
• crave, v.: Nothing makes me feel as welcome in the world as the sound of you laughing at a joke I've made.
• crawl, v.: When you feel like you're crawling, it's time to stand up and leave.
• credit, n.: We borrow against each other's good will, even when it isn't clear how deep the reserve goes.
• crepitate, v.: Uncertainty has a sound, a static electricity caught between you ears, there underneath everything else you hear.
• cringe, v.: I swear it was because your hands were cold.
• criticism, n.: In college, I loved to ask, "What's the thing about me that most needs fixing?" It never went well.
• croon, adj.: The serenade springs from nowhere, my happiness overflowing into a silly song I spin for you as you do the dishes.
• crow, v.: Boasting is indeed a dark bird.
• crowd, n.: I feel smothered, inconsequential, pressed while you take energy from every body in the room.
• crucial, adj.: Please tell me if it's not working.
• crumb, n.: I horde the smallest compliments, and feel like a mouse.
• cry, v.: Why do I cry more at the things in the distance than at things right in front of me?
• cuisine, n.: We keep meaning to learn to cook something that would count as cuisine. In the meantime, we order pizza.
• culpability, n.: I take responsibility for my responselessness, for assuming I can spell thing out in silence when I can't.
• cumulative, adj.: We exist not just in this moment, but in all of the moments we've had before it. Love is the entirety, not the flashpoint.
• curator, n.: My past is a museum of experiences, and I can only display a small fraction of the collection to you at any given time.
• curio, m.: It was there in an old school copy of Moby Dick - I didn't open it, but held to the notion of your letter-writing youth.
• curious, adj.: The cat decided it was worth the risk, because otherwise he'd live in the same room his whole life, cornered and bored.
• curmudgeon, n.: My inner old man sounds a lot like my inner little kid, petulant that the world refuses to bend to his way.
• cursive, adj.: Define me by the looped and the erratic, not the fine calibrations of block type.
• curvature, n.: In the mirror I see only the wrong curves. It takes the darkness and your touch to show me the right ones.
• custody, n.: "If we break up," you say, "I get the Vonnegut." "If we break up," I say, "you will get nothing but Plath."
• cycloramic, adj.: In happiness, I want to reach out to all 360 degrees of the world.
• cynical, adj.: When the outer world seem so tainted that it taints your inner world.
• cypher, n.: You tell me I'm as inscrutable as you are, but I seem so clear to me.
• dabble, v.: Like the ukelele you never learned to play or the spoon collection that only lasted two spoons, am I destined to dust?
• daft, adj.: Is it foolish to love words for foolishness, to think you can make a bad decision feel lighter by calling it daft?
• dagger, n.: The thought that you might not love me at all.
• daily, adj.: The minimum frequency at which I question out relationship; also the minimum frequency at which I find it worth it.
• dalliance, n.: There is nothing sophisticated about having an affair, no matter how you may dress it up in drama.
• damage, n.: Every time you break up, a piece of you falls away, never to return, even if your lover does.
• damsel, n.: It's gotten to the point that you can't think of her without also thinking of distress.
• dance, v.: To turn your body into music.
• dandelion, n.: My wish when I blow things away is often for them to come back.
• danger, n.: I want to peel back the warning labels and find you underneath.
• dapper, adj.: A sophisticated handsomeness that suggests a pocket square and a cravat.
• daresay, v.: I like this qualifier, because while some words can merely be said, there are others that need to be daresaid.
• dark, ad.: I am not afraid of the dark as much as I am afraid of my own helplessness within it.
• darling, adj.: The lover bakes a pie, treating the recipe like grail, then abandoning scripture and improvising before your eyes.
• date, n.: In my experience, if you have to ask if it is one, then it isn't.
• dateable, adj.: Only the geologist with the comforts of carbon testing has a semi-accurate measure of this.
• dawn, n.: When revelations dawn, there may be light, but it isn't necessarily warmth.
• day, n.: A minor increment of your life that can contain emotional immensity.
• dazzle, v.: Some relationships are about glitter, but ours hews to the dazzle of the unexpected, the horizon that bursts into sunflowers.
• deafening, adj.: It is not our silence that is deafening, but all the words underneath it, yelled in our heads.
• dealbreaker, n.: You passed the test when you had books on your shelves, and had read many of them.
• death, n.: We define love by the heart, and we define death by its stopping.
• debased, adj.: I am livid when ungodly things are attributed to God and unloving things are attributed to love.
• debate, n.: An attempt to confine argument within rules. Not applicable to relationships.
• debrief, v.: In this particular situation, the more proper word would be deboxer.
• debut, v.: I was more nervous about your friends liking me; I think you were more nervous about liking my friends.
• deceit, n.: The lies that aren't well intentioned, that we conjure because we think we can get away with them.
• decide, v.: This is what we do - we push each other to the choice of whether or not to stay. And when it's going well, it's unquestioned.
• decline, v.: I used to think if I declined it would lead to our decline, but now I know that no is an essential caesura in keeping peace.
• deconstruct, v.: To attempt to pare something down to its elements, only to create a much bigger mess than existed before.
• dedication, n.: Without you I'd be talking alone in a closed room, so of course these words are for you.
• deduction, n.: The noun form of both deduce and deduct - a sign that the things you figure out will be counted against someone?
• deep, adj.: Love is not a swimming pool, gently sloped and clearly marked. When you step in and keep going, you must know how to swim far.
• deface, v.: You can't pass a WET PAINT sign without ripping off the T. It's gotten to the point that I do it when you're not there.
• defeat, v.: Name the enemy and I will help you fight it. You just need to name it to me.
• defiance, n.: You draw me the road map of all your failed relationships, and instead of trying to navigate it, I set a match to its edge.
• deficient, adj.: It is like one of Zeus'z cruel tricks, that I never feel I measure up to myself.
• definition, n.: My body is full of words but I will never be able to arrange them into a definition. I am coming to accept this.
• deflect, v.: "Where were you?" I ask, and you say, "Where wasn't I?" And I think the answer's obvious: Here.
• defuse, v.: "There is something about my mother," you warned me, "that makes people want to throw water on her."
• degree, n.: I agree that love is like temperature-too hot and too cold are unbearable, so you dial yourselves to the most comfortable place.
• dejected, adj.: When you see life through midnight-colored glasses at any time of day.
• delay, v.: The thwarting of instant gratification; or, a pause to figure things out.
• delegate, n.: I have you call for the pizza or ask the guard for directions, because you're not intimidated by strangers and I still am.
• deliberate, adj./v.: As an adjective, so premeditated, but as a verb, still indecisive. This is how we make each other feel.
• delicate, adj.: Love makes you breakable, but that's okay.
• delight, n.: We have to remember to stop and savor the slower pleasures in our high-speed lives, or else we'll lose them completely.
• delineate, v.: I don't mind losing myself with you every now and then. I just need to get myself back, still separate from you.
• deliverance, n.: If I didn't think you were going to take me to a better place, I wouldn't fall into your arms.
• demand, n.: The sole requirement for any interaction is an underlying kindness, a recognition of mutual humanity.
• demeanor, n.: The thing you lack when you demean me, or anyone else.
• demilune, n.: The slow, long pause when you stare at the lover and wonder whether he or she waxes or wanes.
• demolish, v.: Why are there so many more synonyms for destruction than creation? What is the dictionary trying to say?
• demon, n.: The advisory being in my head who sees everything wrong, and in seeing everything wrong, makes everything wrong.
• demonstrate, v.: Show don't tell is actually better advice for love than it is for writing.
• demythologize, v.: Not every story needs to have a villain. Too often we create them, just to feel our lives have a plot.
• denial, n.: When you choose to know less, even when you know better.
• density, n.: It was not depth, but density that made me know I loved you - the thoughts so close together, the empty space banished.
• dentrifice, n.: You said it was silly for us to buy two kinds of toothpaste, so we swapped for a week, to see who cared the most.
• denude, v.: I like it more when you undress me, because then it feels like it's mutual, not just my own desire to lay us bare.
• depart, v.: Leave is what you do because of someone else; depart is what you do purely on your own.
• depend, v.: To leave a part of yourself in someone else, and trust them to be there when you need it.
• depleted, adj.: There is a difference between feeling empty and feeling emptied. There is loss from the losing, not the not having.
• derail, v.: We are not trains. It's okay if we fall off the tracks.
• derelict, adj.: Even the things we've abandoned still stand inside us, ramshackle rot of bad decisions, and the better decisions to move on.
• derision, n.: The things you criticize the most vehemently are usually the things you fear or hate within yourself.
• descend, v.: It is not a freefall into sadness, but a staircase.
• describe, v.: Friends will never understand, because they can only go by what you tell them.
• desensitized, adj.: Being in a relationship is like leaving a window open in summer - you get used to the noise in order to have the breeze.
• desert, n.: You don't drown in loneliness; you are stranded within it.
• design, v.: Let's never fit into any particular shape. Let's make our own.
• desirable, adj.: I want your appreciation, not your approval.
• desire, v.: To want with the full intensity of your self, to a degree you cannot explain.
• despair, n.: To be gripped by the feeling that nothing you ever do mattes, that the wold and everyone in it are unchangeable.
• desperate, adj.: When you are willing to go against your better self's cautions, because if you don't, you feel all will be lost.
• despite, prep.: Such a valuable preposition, to teach us to transcend the bad things that come with the good, and likewise.
• destabilize, v.: If you do not appreciate love, if you do not treat it with care, then it owes you no debt.
• destination, n.: For a hundred different reasons, you are the place I want to be.
• destiny, n.: I do not believe we are the written; I believe we are the writers.
• destitute, adj.: It is not your poverty of language but your poverty of sympathy that stuns me when you stoop to your lows.
• detail, n.: These moments I collect add up to the way you live your life. Every small gesture links to something larger.
• detectable, adj.: We are all transparent, when seen in the right light, from the right angle.
• detente, n.: When we're too tired to tether ourselves to the fight, so we let it leave the room.
• develop, v.: You stare in the dark room, waiting to see if the negatives can be transformed into a perfect image.
• deviate, v.: You force me to go against my nature, and as a result I often find my better nature.
• devotion, n.: When the storm comes, whatever storm, I will run inside of it to save you.
• dewfall, n.: Somehow the uneasiness of falling asleep is anointed with the certainty of waking up.
• dexterity, n.: Holding on is as much a trick of the eye as the talent of the hand.
• diabolical, adj.: To deny someone else love simply to preserve your own.
• dialectic, n.: We investigate the truth with words, and hide it with words about the investigation.
• diametric, adj.: The space between our differences is so much smaller than the space between the things we share.
• diamond, n.: Of course the roughness comes with it, the constant, bearable flaws of the clearest, hardest things you love.
• dicey, adj.: I thought my odds of finding a good relationship were the same as rolling double lucky 7s. You were my 1 in 144 chance.
• diction, n.: I have to believe we are made of the words we choose.
• die, v.: We are too young for this to be part of our vocabulary. I cannot think of you in terms of this.
• diet, n.: The best thing is to fall in love with someone who wouldn't really notice the difference anyway.
• difficult, adj.: I can't make you love me if you don't.
• diffuse, adj.: Sometimes I scatter like rubble and sometimes I scatter like light.
• dilute, v.: The word "sorry" loses a piece of its power every time you have to use it.
• diluvial, adj.: A rush of affection that leaves you completely at sea; I've lost my horizons, and you are the only boat.
• dim, adj.: In that hour between the sky darkening and the lighting of our lamps, I search you out, just wanting to know you're there.
• dimension, n.: I wanted it to be real, and I knew that for it to be real, it had to have depth, and reach into the harder places.
• disambiguate, v.: Tell me the truth in no uncertain terms. Do you love me?
• disarming, adj.: Some days my life is a series of bombs waiting to go off, and you manage to charm them into defusing.
• disavow, v.: "It's not like we're married!" you yell at me. As if we haven't made vows already, as if I cannot hold you to them.
• disclaimer, n.: By date five, I'd given you the warnings about my own instability, my own unsuitability, and there was still a sixth date.
• discombobulated, adj.: One of those first nights you slept over, I woke up and thought you were a burglar, and jumped out of the bed.
• discontinent, n.: When you feel your sadness is a vast place with its own topography, separate from all other land masses.
• discourage, v.: When my friends told me not to go so fast, I felt they were trying to rob me of my courage, and held to it tighter.
• discovery, n.: I could never answer when people asked me, big picture, what I wanted. It was a shock to realize I wanted to be with you.
• disgrace, n.: When you tell me what you've done, it feels like you've dismembered all the grace we've cultivated over time.
• dishonest, adj.: My heart never lies to me, but sometimes it is just plain wrong.
• dismay, n.: The look on your face when we woke up in the cabin and I told you it would be at least a fifteen minute drive for coffee.
• disobedient, adj.: You say it doesn't count as walking on the grass if we hold hands and run.
• disorder, n.: Just because my love for you falls out of sequence doesn't mean it falls into chaos.
• disperse, v.: I've never been able to hold my love for long; as soon as I feel it, it wants out.
• display, n.: The face of the clock, the kiss on the street, the bravado of opening the door, the laugh that's a little too loud on purpose.
• disposable, adj.: A sure sign of love is when things you'd ordinarily discard - ticket stubs, Post-it handwriting - endure for their echoes.
• disremember, v.: We construct stories out of memories that are stories already; the version that sticks is rarely the version that played.
• dissect, v.: "Don't try to take it all apart and examine it," you tell me. "Because if you do, that means it's already dead."
• dissonance, n.: Sometimes there are seventeen songs playing at the same time in my head, and you are only singing three of them.
• distance, n.: I lie awake in bed, waiting for your arm to glance once more against mine, to rest there.
• distillation, n.: My time with you is better than my time with anyone else, including myself.
• distinct, adj.: When your voice appears in the room, I don't have to rush to it; I just feel a little more present, knowing it's there.
• distraction, n.: "I just love shiny things," you told me on that fourth date. "Especially if they're filled with alcohol."
• diurnal, adj.: I am the waking one, the daylight riser, the body that tiptoes through the morning motions, the periphery to your sleep.
• dive, n.: Sometimes you have to take the water's word that it's deep enough to take you.
• divulge, v.: Don't be deceived. While I inevitably blurt out the surface, I keep the depths encrypted.
• document, v.: I write it all down to show you I love you, and to show you that love is complicated.
• dog-ear, v.: I trace the passages that are interesting to you, on the pages you've left lightly marked, like a trail.
• dominant, adj.: What you want always matters more to me than what I want, and I don't think it's the same for you.
• dope, n.: There is nothing quite so hard to kick as acting foolishly.
• dormant, adj.: I can put the ghosts to rest, but I am always worried that I'll wake them.
• doubtless, adj.: If there's such a thing, I've never been there.
• downburst, n.: When it becomes too torrential, you must throw the umbrella aside and embrace the force of the rain.
• downcast, adj.: I wake up in the sallow shallows, and need something - music, sunlight, you - to pull me out.
• downfall, n.: Samson plays, and I look at the flowers you stole for me.
• draft, n.: That chill is your own incompleteness; no matter how final you feel, the wind will always get through
• dream, n.: A place where the consequences aren't real
• dreamt, v.: It's a much more complicated word in the past tense.
• drowsily, adv.: Drunk on sleep for once, our kisses are murmurs and our murmurs are kisses.
• dubious, adj.: There is no achievement in having someone just for the sake of being able to say you're not alone.
• dumb, adj.: What wordsmith decided to equate stupidity with an inability to speak? What did he fail to say to his lover?
• dusk, n.: As half light turns to quarter light, I feel something settle in myself, and have less of a need to call your name.
• dyslalia, n.: When you don't listen, it has the effect of making me feel light I can't speak.
• dysphoria, n.: It is a good sign if you don't know this word.
• each, adv.: With one word, any group or pair returns to individuality.
• eclectic, adj.: If we had predictable tastes, we'd live predictable lives.
• editorialize, v.: The thing is, if I keep my opinions to myself, then they're all I'll hear.
• effect, n.: You make me want to be a better person, but you can also make me feel worse for when I fail.
• effigy, n.: I try to think of the shape love would take. It wouldn't be a heart. The best I can some up with is a pulse.
• effort, n.: I'll show you that you're with it.
• effusive, adj.: I try to rein them in, but there are times when my feelings for you stampede.
• either, conj./adv.: Sometimes this word is a choice and sometimes it's an ultimatum.
• elastic, adj.: You don't have to bend something until it breaks. You can also bend it beyond recognition, useless even before it breaks.
• elemental, adj.: You are my helium, my iron. My carbon, my oxygen.
• elsewhere, n.: At least half of me is always here.
• emancipation, n.: Push me too hard and I will want to be free of you. Once that decision is made, it's hard to go back.
• embolden, v.: There may be an initial cowardice in writing things down instead of airing them, but this is me gathering the speed I need.
• embower, v.: I surround my heart with trees because I want that steady sense of life, the feeling of being hidden but still able to be found
• embrace, v.: Let us catch our beautiful foolishness and encircle it in the double-hold of our arms.
• embroider, v.: The stories we stitch onto our selves are the way we can engage a mind that's not our own.
• emerge, v.: It's not just that you bring out the best in me; I wouldn't have known what the best in me was if you hadn't helped draw it out.
• empathy, n.: The essential quality of realizing that everyone else is just as human as you are.
• emphasis, n.: There's always the telltale syllable within the word, the intonation that reveals the inclination.
• empirical, adj.: There is no point in making the bed, unless you have company coming over.
• empty, adj.: Looming large in the arsenal of dark thoughts is the belief that I am, in fact, hollow, unable to feel things deeply enough.
• empurple, v.: Just the existence of this verb turns my mood a bright purple, like I've just had a sip of grape juice.
• emulate, v.: Truth? When I grow up, I want to be a lot like myself, only grown up.
• encampment, n.: Let's build a fort of sheets, and give the guards the night off.
• enchantment, n.: Harmony from discord, when something clicks into place outside of us and causes something to click into place inside us.
• encounter, v.: There are times I wish we were strangers again, just so we could relive that first thrill of everything knitting into place.
• endangerment, n.: That's what love is, isn't it? A willful endangerment of one's own heart, faith, and sanity.
• endearing, adj.: Sweetness without strategy; the accidental signs of caring I catch
• endurance, n.: If not stronger, at least what doesn't kill us leaves us alive.
• enjoy, v.: It's not just that I found I enjoyed your company -- I discovered enjoyed my own company a little more when I was with you.
• enormity, n.: I think there is something profoundly beautiful about two very small things finding each other.
• ensoul, v.: What you do to my body is nothing compared to what you do to the part of me that transcends my body.
• entangle, v.: We do not weave the web, but we choose where to put our hands and our feet.
• enthrall, v.: The first time love hits, we return to that infant fascination, suddenly realizing that shapes are objects, sounds are words.
• enticement, n.: Sometimes I'm in the mood for sugar, sometimes I prefer salt.
• entirely, adv.: How can I ask you to know everything about me when I myself will never come close?
• entreaty, v.: The golden rule fails when you hate yourself.
• epicardium, n.: Don't treat the heart as porous; it has a think skin.
• epicormic, adj.: Let us grow from the dormant buds; let us surprise ourselves in our own waking.
• era, n.: Some people mark time by where they lived or where they worked; I mark time by who I loved the most.
• erosion, n.: More often, it's not a break so much as the steady dissolution of the love you had in common.
• erotic, adj.: Brush up against me.
• err, v.: To assume the words left unsaid can still be heard.
• erratic, adj.: The pulse of love is as much sporadic silence as it is tangible beat.
• esoteric, adj.: That drawer of knickknacks, all very odd but none of them ends in themselves. My mind is like that drawer.
• essential, adj.: Not humor itself, but a sense of it; not affection all the day, but a sense of it.
• etch, v.: Love doesn't write on the surface - it carves into it.
• ethical, adj.: When I asked you why you mismatched forks, you said, "Never steal from your friends, and restaurants are not your friend."
• etymology, n.: We are words in search of our roots, sounds with no sense of our history.
• eudaemonic, adj.: Behold the better demons of our nature, who lead us to frolic instead of fear.
• eudaemonist, n.: I do, in fact, believe that good actions will bring happiness. Eventually.
• evacuate, v.: Before you burn the building down, be sure to leave it.
• evanesce, v.: The one that got away gets away; the bad patch smooths; the pain lingers for a time, but only for a time.
• evaporate, n.: When you turn up the heart, maybe I won't burn - maybe I'll just lift away.
• everyone, n.: Sift all opinions before using to bake.
• evocation, n.: Your echoes are everywhere, to the point that it's ridiculous to say that thinking of you is a choice.
• evolve, v.: Love grows from distraction to foundation, flutter to pulse, waterfall to river.
• excursive, adj.: I want us to have a love that travels and meanders. I want us to have a love that takes us places, and takes its time.
• exhaustion, n.: When your synapses feel like they are on opposite sides of a room crowded with the things you have to do.
• exhilaration, n.: Moments when you can feel everything at once.
• exhume, v.: When we dig up our mistakes, we'll find them largely gone. If we're not distracted by the decay, we can learn from the bones.
• exorcize, v.: You don't call them demons, but I hear them speak sometimes inside your body, bedeviling your better nature.
• expand, v.: It was the unwritten vocabularies - sights, tastes, the wordless sounds - that you had to pull me toward, curiously.
• explode, v.: There are times when I just can't contain my life in my head, and it's released as angry static against all bystanders.
• exploits, n.: Let's do this one as a noun, not a verb. Misadventure always trumps mistreatment.
• extemporaneous, adj.: You catch me with an "I adore you" as I'm reaching for an apple in the market; I have no idea what I've done right.
• extinguish, v.: I watch you, outside myself, as you delicately tend to my doubts, redirecting the oxygen away from the flame.
• extol, v.: Your attempts to always make it on time; the patience while my mother tells you an endless story; the way you hold open the door.
• extraneous, adj.: The sight of you writing at the kitchen table, all concentration. A throwaway moment I decide to keep.
• extraordinary, adj.: To find peace, even for a moment. By yourself, or with someone else.
• extrinsic, adj.: We don't decide the weather. We don't decide the shape of the day. We only decide how to live within them.
• eyewall, n.: Once you've hit enough of them, you never trust the calm within the storm.
• facile, adj.: Never dismiss anyone else's pain. I know I've had it easy, but that doesn't mean it can't be hard.
• facsimile, n.: When you go away, I ask you to leave a metaphor behind to keep me company. "I need you as colors need light," you say.
• fate, n.: You can only believe in this if you are willing to take everything else for granted, which I am not.
• fealty, n.: To love, you must vacate the concepts of owe and own.
• feasible, adj.: I have never heard anyone say, "I love you within reason" - it's just impossible to do.
• feast, n.: The meal you cooked me wasn't as important as being there to see how you danced and fussed with the ingredients.
• feat, n.: I never imagined anyone putting up with me for this long. I want to congratulate you.
• feign, v.: It's probably best if I don't know who you want me to be, because then I don't have to pretend to be that person.
• fence, v.: In our effort to keep things in, we inevitably keep things out.
• ferocious, adj.: I can only summon the lion when I need to defend myself; it will not show up for aggression.
• fibril, n.: It's good to remember that the heart is not a unanimous object.
• fidget, v.: Thoughts wander out of us, uncontrollable.
• figment, n.: The currency of dreams.
• fizzy, adj.: "I'd rather be bourbon," you say, "because champagne never lasts."
• foible, n.: A foible almost sounds collectible. We don't consciously put them on display, but eventually you'll meet them all.
• foolhardy, adj.: I saw the warning in some people's eyes. They saw their history repeating in me, and I couldn't guarantee otherwise.
• footloose, adj.: You're certainly free of fanciness, but who cares as you teach the dance floor how to dance, heels helium, hands to heaven.
• foreboding, n.: I would wake up and know you weren't there. I'd see you beside me, but was convinced that was the illusion.
• forecast, n.: You're not unlike the radio weatherman. It's only when the drops start to fall that you can guarantee it will rain.
• fortuitous, adj.: That we should both be looking at the same time, and that we should end up looking in the same place.
• fortunate, adj.: I feel I would have half a life without you.
• found, adj.: The first step to belonging.
• foundling, n.: There's a part of me that thinks of you as orphaned from your old, more difficult life and adopted into mine.
• fractal, n.: We lodge a tiny piece of ourselves in every place we love.
• fragile, adj.: We're vulnerable to hurt, but we're also stronger than that hurt. Each time we feel so fragile, we also learn we are not.
• frantic, adj.: When the unknown appears exponentially larger than the known, inducing a panic that feeds on itself.