Love's Lifetime

Love did not arrive with fireworks or flame,

No choir of angels, no thunder, no name

Spoken by fate in a voice carved of gold.

It came like a warmth I didn’t yet hold,

Like sunlight that finds you while you’re looking away,

Like a hand taking yours without asking to stay.

At first it was quiet—almost a doubt,

A feeling that lingered, then circled about.

It lived in the pauses, the space between words,

In shared little glances that felt slightly absurd.

It hid in the laughter that softened my chest,

In how every silence with you felt like rest.

Love grew in the ordinary, day after day,

In cups left unfinished, in things we’d both say

At the same time, then laugh, then try once again.

It learned all my habits, my joy and my pain.

It memorized scars I don’t show to the light

And stayed when my best still didn’t feel right.

It’s patient, this love—not perfect or clean.

It’s messy and human, lived in between

Apologies whispered at half past two,

And promises kept in the small things we do.

It’s choosing each other when it’s easier not to,

When pride wants to speak but the heart tells it to stop too.

Love is the courage to be fully seen,

To stand there unguarded, tender, and mean

To no one but fear, which it learns how to face.

It says, You are safe here. You don’t need to brace.

It doesn’t erase all the hurt that you bring,

But it teaches those wounds how to loosen their sting.

I love you in ways that don’t ask to be loud,

Not just in the sunlight, but under the cloud.

I love you in questions I don’t yet know how

To answer with certainty, then or now.

I love you in moments that don’t feel divine,

When time moves too fast or refuses to climb.

If love is a language, I’m learning your tone—

The rhythms you speak when you think you’re alone.

The softness you carry, the strength you conceal,

The things that you joke about so you don’t feel.

I’m learning that love is not something you win,

It’s something you practice again and again.

So stay—not as a promise carved deep into stone,

But stay like the stars do, steady, unknown.

Stay like the ocean that pulls and forgives,

Like a story that grows as long as it lives.

If love is a lifetime, then this much I know:

I choose you in all the ways love learns to grow.