Love can inspire everything from a heartfelt soliloquy to a very public, dramatic gesture.

But too often, you get everything in between with no editing whatsoever.

Enter the six-word love story. Six Valentine’s Days ago, the Washington Post asked readers to send their abbreviated love stories. The results were poetic, hilarious, steamy and hopeful. In addition to love, the six-word challenge has been used to get people talking on broad topics like race, childhood and self-reflection.

In her new book “The Right Thing,” Washington Post’s wedding columnist Ellen McCarthy referenced the Post’s six-word Valentine’s Day challenge. In anticipation of Ellen’s’ visit to our show, we asked listeners for their stories.

Here are our favorites (with some of our own stories, too!):

Ellen McCarthy will join The Kojo Nnamdi Show Wednesday, April 23 at 12:21 p.m.