Something Like Fondness

It was a surprising kind of love.

The kind you don't go out looking for;

the kind you don't even know is yours until

you're sitting under the stars at midnight,

shivering in the cold air,

feeling fuller and freer and more alive than you dreamed was even possible.

I suppose love isn't quite what I thought it was.

It isn’t hands all over the place or fumbling for the right words,

it isn’t bitterness lingering in the air after an apology,

it isn’t ultimatums tossed into the air like confetti.

All things considered, Love is quite pure.

It's patience and sacrifice and feeling so deeply you think you might explode,

it's dancing, hands intertwined, head thrown back in laughter,

it's gentleness and compromise and wanting to stay.

More than anything, wanting to stay.

There are nights where love feels like earthquakes in my chest.

And then there are nights where love simply feels like coming home.

It was a surprising kind of love,

where suddenly we're sitting in your car,

talking about things like who we used to be.

Your eyes are sparkling and you speak with a certain tenderness,

and I feel my heart molding into something like fondness for you.

We walk outside, so intertwined in conversation

we could wander off the edge of the world.

Everything is spinning, spinning, spinning;

And all I can do to stay grounded is hold your hand.

I don’t know where we will be in five years,

but for once, I'm not even sure that it matters.

We find each other with open hands and growing hearts,

and all the time in the world could not pry us apart.

I reckon I'm writing this because after nineteen years,

I have found that the most intricate words

won't begin to capture Love's crushing complexity.

I ought to use simpler words, because that's how it feels—

Simple.

Tonight I have decided that even if the whole world comes to blackness,

even if this all comes to a excruciating end,

I will never regret loving and being loved in return.