To my lover:

You return,
worn from the weight
of another long night
quiet,
not from absence,
but from having given too much of yourself
to a world that doesn’t always give back.

And still,
you come to us
to soft arms,
to open laughter,
to the sanctuary we’ve made together.

I see you,
and I thank heaven for the quiet ways you love.

Each kiss you give
is a prayer,
each embrace a remembering
of who we were
before the chaos,
and who we are becoming
because of it.

Yes, it’s harder.
Yes, it’s heavier.
But it’s richer,
truer,
holy even
because of what we carry
side by side.

You hold the world on your back
like anointed earth,
and you do it with grace
that humbles me.

If it were me,
I might have vanished
like wind through trees.
But you stay.
You root.
You rise.

I love you more
than any storm could shake,
more than flesh,
more than time.

You are
my sacred place
my living altar.

Maybe this life
isn’t the one you imagined,
but I pray you find
the divine in it.
In us.
In me.

Your love lives in my bones,
my breath,
my being.

No soul
has ever touched mine
as deeply,
as wholly,
as you.