Maybe you suggested something unthinkable. Like, perhaps, I should get my dog groomed after she rolled in a pool of a sick horse. And I naturally concluded that you were the absolute worst, for thinking that I would subject an angel to the horror of being bathed by a blade-toting stranger. Maybe it was editing my book, and you said something elitist like, "Andrea, you can't end every poem by repeating the last line," or "You can't have the word 'moon,' or 'firefly' in every piece you write."

And I scream something like, "I'd rather have a sky without a moon in it than a poem with a moon in it." That felt nice. Maybe it was the poly-argument. Your face going fire engined the second I mentioned an old flame. Maybe you decided I didn't want my history to exist, which meant you wanted to be magic. A virgin rabbit pulled out of your pretty hat, or a lady cut in half. But I am not a lady. Maybe it was when you said "like" six times in a single sentence. And I freaked out about our age difference. And you said I couldn't argue for my own time-earned wisdom while throwing a three-year-old's tantrum. A good point. Maybe it was one of the times I got so mad I de-friended you on Facebook. And you got so mad about that I decided you were the shallow end of the baby pool. Maybe you peed in the water to prove me right.

Maybe it was the night at the straight bar when a table of men invited you to sit with them. Maybe it was when you didn't notice their eyes drooling down your breast. Maybe you thought your karaoke's just bringing you to tears. Maybe I was fem-shaming and calling it 'having my feelings.' Maybe it was when you suggested the bar was queer-friendly because someone had asked if I was Tegan and Sara.

Maybe it was one of those nights when I was two people, neither of them just the real me, caricatures of my worst possible qualities. Maybe it was when I decided to start a podcast, discussing all of our arguments, then got into an argument during the first five minutes of recording and canceled the show at some point. It hit me. You and I, we are always going to fight for love. I am always going to drag my heart into the ring, to call you knockout. I've been waiting for my whole life. You are always going to trigger me, rifling into my history until every ghost is hunted out. Every fight we had ever been in has been an opportunity to bruise the past. When we have forever been hoarding in our garage. Had we ever fought about your inability to park a car, because the GPS stops telling what to do: pulling to a driveway.

Please run over the mailbox. If that keeps me looking for new ways to send my best self to you, I am so in love with who we are, who we have been fighting to become together. I can't believe I finally adore a human as much as I adore my dog, even when I'm in the doghouse. I'm like, "No, you look like my dog so much."

Thank you for telling me there's no need to open our relationship because being with me is already like being with 50 impossible people. Thank you for accepting my friend request for the third time this year. Thank you for screaming your way home from that straight bar to the bed where our bodies made up to the full moon, through to the window, and the firefly poured into the room. And the firefly landed in your hand, which you opened like a ring box, and asked me to marry you. And we were so new. I blushed instead, but answered, "Fireflight is forever. And you know what my answer is."