There is something deeply tragic about how love is spoken of today. Not love, really, desire. Lust dressed up in aesthetics, marketed as closeness. Infatuation that burns hot and fast, then vanishes with the first discomfort. We live in a time where the word “connection” is used so lightly, but experienced so rarely. Where the craving for bodies is... See more

“Crushes offer a singular power to make concessions to the scary idea that things change,” Reid writes, “and that’s what makes the unrequitedness worth the rush. In the end, all I want is the practice of crushing itself.”

A crush is a powerful little vial of that pure feeling—the longing, the push and pull. In his poem “The More Loving One,” W. H. Auden compared unrequited love to looking up at the stars, observing their beauty while knowing full well they “do not give a damn.” But he wasn’t mad about it; he saw that that’s how it should be, and anyway, he was more... See more