she loves you

If she’s a zombie: She loves you, but only for your brains.

If she says, “I love you” on the roller coaster, right after you’ve puked down your shirt: She loves you.

If she plays pointedly with strangers’ babies at the park, intermittently looking over to you with an expression that says, “See?”: She loves you.

If she knows what song is coming next on the mix CD you made her: She loves you.

If she loves you, if she really loves you, you’ll know it. If you can wake up to her staring at you and it’s not even mildly creepy, if you catch her smelling the shoulder of the hooded sweatshirt you lent her for an autumn walk at the beach, and not for B.O., if she makes you a pancake in the shape of a shark, if she calls you drunkenly at four in the morning “to talk,” if she laughs at your jokes when they’re funny and makes fun of you when they’re not, if she keeps her fridge stocked with Guinness tallboys for when you come over, if she tells you how she wishes she were closer to her sister and that her dad makes her sad: She loves you, of course she loves you.

--And with a love like that, you know you should be glad.

-Pasha Malla