The Lover's Dictionary by David Levithan Read Free Book Online Page A

driver’s license photo was worth me making up the difference. And then I found the photo behind your health insurance card: you and me in front of the bay in San Francisco. I remember you stopping that woman and asking her to take the picture, and how she had no idea how to use the camera on your phone. You gave her the full tutorial as she oohed and aahed. I stood there in the wind, shifting from foot to foot as the photographer counseled the assistant, and all I could think was that I should have been the one with the camera, because the two of you were such a funny picture. Instead, we have this blurry, happy shot, which must mean something to you if you carry it around like this, folded to fit.

rubberneck , v.
    It’s not only car accidents. Why is it only car accidents? It can also be when I lean over you in the morning, trying to see through the sliver of open window shade to find out what the weather is like. Cranes, the birds with the rubber necks, don’t always find carnage. Sometimes it’s just rain.

S
    sacrosanct , adj.
    The nape of your neck. Even the sound of the word nape sounds holy to me. That and the hollow of your neck, the peek of your chest that your shirt sometimes reveals. These are the stations of my quietest, most insistent desire.

sartorial , adj.
    “I’m so tired of those slippers,” you said.
    I shook my head, and you had the nerve to say, “Well, that’s not very nice.”
    And I explained, “I’m not laughing at you. I’m laughing at your unintentional quoting of Hedda Gabler.”
    “You want to see Hedda Gabler?” you asked. Then you threw my slippers in the fire.
    It escalated. I lunged for the hideous scarf your great-aunt had sent you — it would have been spared had she knitted it herself, but I suspected foreign sweatshop labor. You retaliated by burning my “sleeping T-shirt” ( American Idiot tour), a patchwork of stains and holes. I topped that with your unbearable tennis sneakers — until the rubber started to burn, and the smell made us stop.
    “I loved those slippers,” I said.
    “I assure you,” you said, “they did not love you back.”

scapegoat , n.
    I think our top two are:
    1. Not enough coffee.
    2. Too much coffee.

serrated , adj.
    And you said, “I’m not sure we can.”

solipsistic , adj.
    Go ahead, I thought. Go ahead. Go ahead. I got stuck there. Go ahead. Go ahead. Because I genuinely couldn’t see anything after that.

sonnet , n.
    (NOTE ON THE LEAP: How rough and worn the weight of flight — the soul, when gathered, forms its own twinned claw and wing, each severed arc, the nape — all grown inside the body, left. Alone with loss, life rises: emblazoned air, trembling star of made faith. The fall that forms in the gut blooms in the arms before the mind, remembering how dangerous and hard the world is when shut, opens its doors so air can cool what light arrives. The chest unhinges, strong from panic, and the loch that is the heart begins to fit. The wind grows sturdier, its skin gigantic. The room that was the source becomes the field, opening out, the stage a hoard revealed.)
    — Billy Merrell , The Proposals

stanchion , n.
    I don’t want to be the strong one, but I don’t want to be the weak one, either. Why does it feel like it’s always one or the other? When we embrace, one of us is always holding the other a little tighter.

stymie , v.
    That ten-letter word for moderate in eating or drinking — first letter a , fourth letter t ? I knew it all along, but was so entertained by your frustration that I kept it to myself.

suffuse , v.
    I don’t like it when you use my shampoo, because then your hair smells like me, not you.

sunder , v.
    Nobody ever told us, “Save it for the bedroom.” But isn’t that what we do? All those times you’ve wanted to strike me — by which I mean, all those times I’ve wanted to strike you — haven’t we translated it into the shove and twist, the scratch and press, the capture and hold? There