I love you.

I don’t say it just to say it, or because silence feels too heavy between us. I say it because it lives in me like breath, quiet, unnoticed sometimes, but constant.

I love you not just in the moments when you smile at me, not only when you are soft, or kind, or present. I love you when you’re distant, when you’re guarded, when your eyes look away because you don’t know what to do with the gravity between us.

I love you in the silences, the pauses, the hesitations in your voice. I love you even when it hurts, especially when it hurts—because pain taught me that my love isn’t shallow. It reaches places where words can’t.

I love you when I’m not speaking, when I fall quiet because I can’t carry what I feel in my chest without trembling. I love you even when you don’t understand why my voice shakes, or why I turn my head away. It’s not because I don’t want to face you, it’s because I want to give you everything, and I don’t know how to do it all at once.

I love you when I overthink, when I overfeel, when I falter. When I’m too much, when I’m lost, when I don’t know how to ask you to hold me. I love you when my soul aches and you don't notice. I love you when you do.

And I love you when I stay. Even after the bruises, even after the words thrown in heat, even after the misunderstandings, I still choose to hold you in my soul. Maybe I do it quietly, maybe in ways only I can feel, but that doesn’t mean it’s any less real.

You are the only one I wanted to give my entire self to, the quiet, the chaos, the ache, the warmth. I don’t love you because you’re perfect, or because you never made me cry. I love you because something in me recognized you. And something in me aches in your absence, and softens in your presence.

You are not a passing season.

You are the reason I held on.

The reason I soften, stay, give, and try again.

Even if I fall short. Even if I falter.

And even when I feel I’ve run out of words, I will still love you.

In silence. In metaphor. In pieces. In prayer.

You may never truly know how much,

but gods and stars know I always have.

And always will.