Shivani Kotian

To me, it speaks to love’s power as an act of invention, the way certain people draw out a version of you that didn’t exist before they arrived. They witness you, and thus, rearrange you. In their presence, words you didn’t know you knew tumble out. Your thoughts sharpen, colours seem richer, you inhabit yourself more fully.

In the end, maybe good friends and lovers are prompt engineers of the soul (forgive me for the AI metaphor). They suggest edits, and if we are willing to be warmed, rewoven, occasionally melted, the program of us runs cleaner, closer to what we hoped when we first began to write ourselves into being.