IT'S VALENTINE'S DAY this weekend—don't run from it so hard that you run right back into it. If you're hardbumming on relationships or presently in an era of jubilant celebration of your damn-self-don't-need-nobody-else, that's wonderful, sweetheart. I've been there. The luckiest of us have also been in a place where Valentine's Day—despite its corporate bloodlines and platitudinous catchphrases—makes complete sense. There are years when you know in your brain that you don't NEED Valentine's Day to remind yourself how sweet you are on someone, but it's hard to honor that frigid realism while this fine blue-eyed girl (fine as all outdoors) lulls love's lukewarm lullabies in your left ear, competing with her snoring labradoodle in your right.

As we're on the precipice of the holiday that launches 1,000 think pieces on why people don't need that holiday, I'm here to tell you, readers, I may not need this holiday, but I want this holiday (THIS YEAR, AT LEAST). Even though I'M GONNA USE THE REST OF MY COLUMN TO WRITE A VALENTINE TO MY GIRLFRIEND, AND IF YOU DON'T LIKE IT, COMPLAIN ABOUT IT IN YOUR NEWSPAPER COLUMN. OH, YOU DON'T HAVE A NEWSPAPER COLUMN? MAUREEN DOWD AND I DON'T WANT TO HEAR YOUR BELLYACHING.

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? You are more doper and way hella cooler. Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, and summer is only like a quarter of the year at best and you're absolutely take-my-glasses-off-and-clean-them-on-the-front-of-my-shirt-then-put-them-back-on-and-blink-a-bunch beautiful all year long.

Sometime too hot (ur also 2 hot) the eye of heaven shines, and often is his gold complexion dimmed. (Shakespeare knew it, booboo, everyone has bad days, even the sun. HELL [heck] even we've had bad days, but the doom of those days are miniscule and ridiculous when measured against the charmed and lovely moments I've gotten to share with you.)

And every fair from fair sometime declines.... (I don't know what this means, but I'll just take this opportunity to say your taste in music is impeccable and enviable.) By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimmed.... (I also don't know what this means, but your style is fucking superb. You know that movie Fifth Element? You dress like how I imagine the people who were too cool to be on an outer-space version of a cruise ship would dress.)

But thy eternal summer shall not fade, nor lose possession of how you're sweeter than a doo-wop song about 10,000 birthday cakes. Nor shall death brag thou wand'rest in his shade. (Wand'rest isn't a word.) When in eternal lines to Time thou grow'st.... (Also not a word. Sometimes I'm amazed by how well the cadence of our humor matches. Knowing that there's someone who perceives the world just similarly enough to comfort and sooth the soul and just differently enough to let the mind bloom with the excitement that there are still new, beautiful, worthy things in this world is, to me, what makes life worth living. That's word.)

So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, so long lives this, and this gives life to thee. (I ripped off Shakespeare for you, booboo. Be my valentine?)