A Feeling So Rare, Yet So Known

I woke up this morning and it is the winter solstice.

The air is crisp.

The sky is clear.

There is a bird perched on a branch outside my window.

The colours seem more vivid, as if the cold has sharpened everything.

As if the morning itself has been rinsed clean.

I woke up this morning and it is cold.

A dry morning.

The kitchen is exactly as it was yesterday, and yet somehow everything is different.

Somehow everything smells like love.

Feels like love.

I love you in an unexpected way.

Easily.

Like breathing.

It comes in and out of me without effort, without permission, without control.

I love you, and it is new.

Exciting.

Clear.

There is awe in it.

My senses are heightened.

I am learning the marks on your chest.

The way your hand feels in mine.

The way your laugh stays behind after you have gone.

Everything is different today, and yet nothing has really changed.

My hand still remembers your hair.

Your voice still lingers in the kitchen.

Your warmth is still somewhere on my skin.

I love you with a depth and passion I thought I would never feel again.

It scares me.

I hold it very close, quietly, carefully, but I think you know.

And I think you feel it too.

That frightens me, because I swore I would never again place myself somewhere I could be hurt.

I swore I would not open that door.

I swore I would know better.

But this feels uncontrollable, and I do not want to press pause.

I want to jump right in.

I want to learn your worries, your pain, your passions.

I want to know the good parts of you, the easy parts, the bright parts.

And I want to know the parts you question.

The parts you hide.

The parts you are still learning how to love in yourself.

I want to make you happy.

Not in a loud or impossible way.

Just in the small ways.

The real ways.

I want to keep your heart safe.

Not because I think it is mine to hold, but because I know what it means to trust someone with something fragile.

I love you in a heartbeat.

Because in you, I have found calm.

A calm that lets me notice everything else.

The light.

The bird.

The shape of the morning.

The quiet mess of the living room.

The cushions still rearranged from yesterday.

Nothing is different.

And yet somehow, I can see a window opening.

Something only I can see.

Or maybe something only we can see.

I love you and it consumes every thought.

Every ordinary thing.

Every silence.

I woke up this morning happy alone, a feeling I have learned to treasure.

But this time, I am not quite alone.

You are with me somehow.

In the room.

In the air.

In the way the morning lands on everything.

And I think, how did I get so lucky to run into you like that?

Casually.

Simply.

As if there was nothing unusual about it.

There is nothing special about love, maybe.

Love is love.

As intense as it has always been.

And yet it is different in your arms.

Simple.

But you are not simple.

It feels as though the depth that brought us close had already met somewhere else.

As if our souls had caught up before we did.

As if we found each other first on another plane, then here, in this one.

In the simplicity of an everyday kiss.

In a message.

In an I miss you.

In a this is something special.

I love you enough to want to write words for you, because words are how I show love.

But perhaps you feel it before I speak.

Perhaps you know already.

In my touch.

In my eyes.

In the way I look at you.

In the way I go quiet when something is too big to say.

I do not need to say it.

My soul is already speaking.

And I know your soul has understood.

I love you simply.

Just as I know how.

Just as I have learned before.

And it is a feeling so rare, and yet so known.

I woke early this morning, on the winter solstice, and the sun is bright.

My dog is asleep on the rug, snoring loudly.

The sound makes the room feel alive.

Almost like music.

I woke up this morning and it is cold.

But there is a heart keeping me warm.

The living room is untouched.

The cushions still rearranged from yesterday.

And somehow everything sounds like love.

Everything feels like love.