possibility

by Elaina Bayard

In fifth grade, a boy passed me a note: Do you like me? Yes__ No __.

I held it in my little palms for a while, thinking, but not for too long. I took out my pencil, which I held incorrectly since I’d never learned the correct way, and I answered it: Maybe. 

When I tell this story, it’s met with laughs, with musings on how headstrong and ridiculous kids can be. I laugh too. It’s funny. I remember the boy looking back at me, bewildered. But I stand by tiny Elaina’s answer. I’d answer the same way now.

I’m a little in love with everyone I meet. Yes, everyone. Even you, reader. I’m prone to daydreams and flights of fancy, have been for forever. When someone laughs like a ringing bell or wears a gorgeous coat or says something particularly clever in a seminar, I’m off, designing our miniscule New York apartment and naming our future dogs. I’ve been accused of being in love with most of my friends and I am. For most of them, if they asked me out, I wouldn’t say no. I always find myself lingering right on that hazy boundary, the cliff edge between platonic and romantic.

Because how can I know if I love someone until I try? Love, as much as it is a feeling, is also a choice. You have to be there, in the moment, to discover if you’re willing to make that choice, again and again. 

So, maybe. Maybe not.

snow days (with you)

by AJ Wu

The last knock-out blizzard I remember was in the winter of 2010 in suburban Maryland. (Snowmageddon, it was called. 18 inches.) Two flashes of memory: my sister and I bundled up by our mom before being let loose outside; our neighbors gathering to help dig out our family car, which had sunk into the snow. I loved all of our neighbors from back then—Aunt Jenny, who would charitably look the other way when we swung from her giant willow tree (the grandest tree I’d ever seen), and Joy next door, six years older but still willing to be dragged into all our games. 

Tonight, I’m checking the weather forecast (they’re saying over 20 inches; tomorrow they’ll measure 37.9, the highest in state history). Life’s felt a bit strange lately. My last semester, and so much fresh joy, sadness, and change. Like everything else, snow this winter is unending, unprecedented, and other adjectives, and digging out the walkway is beginning to feel Sisyphean. 

We wait for the blizzard. I make a simple dinner. My girlfriend stirs hot chocolate, heaps on mini marshmallows, and we settle on the couch to finally watch a movie she’s been talking about for ages. I’m excited to learn more of her references. The snow begins its flurries, historic, I guess, yet quiet. Tomorrow will be shoveling and sinking waist-deep in snow trying to differentiate between the heap that used to be my car and the snowbank. But tonight is warm and bright. Moonlight reflecting outside, only slightly alien; the soft glow of the screen inside, as our little snowglobe shakes, settles. Our upstairs neighbors are doing karaoke to “Bohemian Rhapsody” as I drift asleep. But they’re pretty good, so I don’t mind. 

reframing fulfillment

by Gabrielle Yuan

As a way of daily introductions, I loosely, in one form or another, ask my friends how content they feel on a scale from one to ten. For friends who know me well, it’s really my way of asking how to approach staying present while being completely alone. 

I found myself most in love after my first breakup. It’s like being drenched in snow, when your boots are too short to cover the colossal amounts of heavy, white dust seeping into your ankle socks; and all you know how to do is keep trudging forward into a path buried completely from sight. I couldn’t escape the shiftless wonders of when I’d run into her again on Brook Street, or how Thursday evenings were no longer solely reserved to trying new desserts, no longer accompanied by the charmed feeling of opening a bag of warm cookies. 

Last semester, I learned that being content and being in love are not synonymous. Looking back now, I can watch through a foggy screen the way my friends drew me back into one piece: sitting by my bedside until I fell asleep; picking me up before class to get a hot coffee; walking me back to my dorm late at night, hand stuffed into my jacket pocket and always in reach. My circle of love grew wider, and I found myself at the end of the day no longer wishing it wasn’t over. I couldn’t comprehend how excited I now feel at the spontaneity that comes with no longer having a designated person to turn to. With time, I could really hear myself speak through the things that made each day an ideal one for me. 

As March approaches, it’s almost frightening how easy being alone feels, and even scarier to think back to how fully I had lost hope that things would work out. As I find myself ranking my days higher and higher above that silly scale used for gentle conversation, I’ve realized how powerful the mantra I had been saying all along was: that all feelings really do pass. 

on love that lingers

by Tarini Malhotra 

Flowers have lived in every room I have ever called home. 

They twinkle, even as they live there, stationary, in different colors, materials, and degrees of decay. The large bouquet, nestled in the corner, stands proud and brassy, while its little sister right in front of it is barely holding it together by the golden ribbon I used on the golden day I made it. The gold-painted metallic flowers by its side remind its little sister that they came first, and they are, truly, completely in the right, because I’ve had them for almost a year, from when a golden friend from back home gave them to me on a golden summer day. The Lego flowers on my bedside table smile to themselves, patiently; they know they’ve been with me since last Valentine's Day and have lived through two homes, and they promise they’re okay with the fact that I have not gotten around to re-attaching the buds that fell during the move of Fall ’25. 

And finally, even as I sit on my bed writing this, my flower-adorned blanket curls over me just as it did when I was 15 and a sophomore in high school, and we would sit near the large windows of my family home, basking in the golden hour. These flowers are older than my sweet, loving golden retriever; they persist even as the walls of home change color and the people flitting in and out differ over the years. They smile gently in the echoes of my room, steady, even as I love old and new. 

hang the dj

by Chloe Costa Baker

I could say we met on Instagram. Or I could say we met on the streets of Kyoto.

When my now-boyfriend flew to Japan to meet me in person, a month of non-stop messages had led to this moment. We bonded over connections to Ghana and a childhood love for A Series of Unfortunate Events, all without ever seeing each other’s faces. But this didn’t matter: I was already falling in love with his soul.

That same summer, I started wearing an Irish Claddagh ring, inherited from my mother. The first day I wore it was the day we met in Kyoto; only later did I learn that wearing it facing upward on my right hand signaled that I was in a relationship. I didn’t know it, but I was already his.

My boyfriend was born exactly 365 days before me (2004 being a leap year). I like to think that he wanted to carefully vet every day of the year before signaling me to join him. I like to say we’re chasing each other around the sun.

Or, this is what I say, at least, when I want to practice romance. I’m not someone who believes “everything happens for a reason,” but there is joy in the human act of constructing patterns from the past. I don’t subscribe to “red string theory,” but I appreciate the art of threading connections. When we blow out the same color candle last, or choose the same film for a Valentine’s Day surprise, I am quick to call it a sign. Not from a higher power or an external cosmic abstraction, but from the two of us and how we actively relate to one another.

Both fate and random chance are equally unyielding to free will, and even then my mind easily boggles at the magnitude of intersecting choices that led each of us here. Yet I often think of The Good Place, and Michael’s advice to the pathologically indecisive Chidi: “If soulmates do exist, they’re not found, they’re made.” 

Sometimes, simply being mutually drawn to another person can be considered serendipity. To me, love means license to find meaning in small connections and then build upon them. The art of noticing: not romanticized, but realizational. A two-and-a-half-year anniversary that lines up with Valentine’s Day is just one testament to this realized potential.

back in time

by Hallel Abrams Gerber

This morning, I got an email from 2021, a letter sent by one of my best friends. In a series of exclamation points and capitalizations, she asked about who we had become in the years that elapsed. To the disappointment of her sophomore self, neither of us have boyfriends at the moment, but we did reach many of the milestones she wondered about in the summers that followed. There were relationships and failures and things we learned to definitely not do again. Over late night fries, we continued to tell stories about the people who crossed our paths—new faces and crushes and rivals—their names now foggy and insignificant.

Five years later, we have changed in fundamental ways. How I think about love is so different from how I did back then, fresh out of pandemic isolation. I’d like to think that by now, I know more of what I want to be and who I want to be around. At the very least, the choices I make now feel markedly less embarrassing, or so I’d like to think. By the time they get told to her, they make perfect sense in my mind.

I visited my friend last week. We continued to talk and wander and explore each other’s updated lives.

At the end of her letter, she wrote, “your life would be so incomplete without me.” I am so glad that that is still true. I cannot wait for the next diner debrief of our lives and our loves.

alone but far from lonely

by Jessica Lee

At the ripe old age of 26, I like to joke about my spinster status and how I find myself relating more and more to characters like Eloise Bridgerton. What initially started out as light joking has definitely become a comical part of my chronically single identity at this point.

That being said, I feel I must clarify that while I may be alone romantically, I am far from lonely. Here at Brown, I always find myself running from class to class, activity to activity, and event to event. I never seem to have more than a moment of free time, but I love everything I’m a part of too much to give anything up. And even more than loving the activities I do, it’s the people involved in each and every one that truly fill my cup.

On Valentine’s Day this year, I spent about seven hours (and the majority of the day) with my cheerleading team—running a youth cheer clinic and supporting our awesome women’s basketball team—before ultimately heading back to my apartment to end my night with wine and the Valentine’s Day movie. Although it was, perhaps, the least romantic Valentine’s Day one could have imagined, I have never felt more overwhelmed with love and admiration for the people in my life. My cheer team is full of about 20 of the sweetest individuals in the world, who bring such wholesome joy into my life…even when they call me “unc” or make fun of my millennial tendencies. And it’s people and days like this that truly remind me how love is always in the air, and this type of platonic love is more than I could ever hope for.