I love her because she's beautiful, biting, and intelligent.

She's irreverent and sarcastic, yet sometimes shy and downright demure. I love her because of her full healthy lips and her flawless alabaster skin. I can trace out the universe of stars tattooed on her back for hours and see deeper and more ancient beauties than I've ever seen with any other woman.

Amy was one of my small circle of friends, an adolescent fantasy, and a source of both inspiration and heartbreak. I tied myself to her failures and successes, entangling me with her in my mind until I saw her (however falsely) as my natural complement.

I'm not entirely sure that I really believe in this whole "love" thing, but the things Amy does and says can heal or wound me so profoundly and with so little effort on her part that I can only assume what I'm feeling right now is as close as I'll ever be to that grand emotion reserved for works of poetry and fiction.

Amy is a dreamy-eyed waif of a girl. A sort of hodge-podge collection of ideas and ideals, dreams and demons, that she'll sometimes share with me and make me more full and complete because of it. She's simply the most wonderful woman I've ever met. She is definitely less than perfect, but she is the only person I know who makes me want to be a better human being. She makes me want to change my bad habits and cleanse my whole being while lamenting that which is unchangeable and thus keeps me permanently from ever being good enough to have her.

Once in a while, I look in the mirror and I seem to have strangely empty eyes and I wonder if I have any kind of drive at all, any kind of spark of a soul that animates my limbs and give voice to innermost thoughts. When I'm around Amy, I feel like some sort of godlike puppeteer, pulling and directing my marionette limbs without even the smallest concern for the physical world. There's some sort of spiritual and mental beauty in this person who I've known for so long and thought beyond reach.

And, very recently, she's starting to seem within my grasp. I don't every want to let go of her, but I also don't want to grip too tightly and thus extinguish that special spark, that certain something that makes me better, however briefly, than what I usually am. Maybe it's not love, then, after all. Perhaps it's simply selfishness: I want to spend my life with someone who makes me feel wonderful. When written down, it seems a very selfish idea and my motives look less than pure.