The Gravity of Wanting

I loved him

the way morning loves the horizon

without asking it to stay.

Not for promises.

Not for futures sketched in soft pencil.

Not because I was empty

and needed a name to fill the silence.

I was already whole.

I had stitched myself back together

from the kind of love

that makes a woman doubt her own reflection.

I had learned the language of stillness,

how to cradle my own pulse

when it tried to race ahead.

So when I chose him,

it was not hunger.

It was recognition.

I loved him gently,

like water resting against stone.

Not trying to carve it.

Not trying to claim it.

Just touching,

just being.

I loved the architecture of his mind,

the quiet rooms he let me wander through.

The way his laughter broke open the air.

The way his eyes softened

when he forgot to be guarded.

I did not love him

for how he held me.

I loved him

for how he existed

when no one was watching.

Even the hard days,

the distance,

the almosts,

the sentences that trailed off into silence,

I keep them folded inside me

like pressed flowers.

They were real.

They were ours.

This was not the trembling kind of love.

Not the grasping.

Not the bargaining.

This was choice.

I loved him from a full cup.

And maybe that is why losing him

echoes so deeply.

There is no insecurity to blame.

No fear to accuse.

No emptiness to point at and say

that is why.

I simply wanted him.

I thought he would be a constant,

a familiar voice in the background of my days,

a presence that did not need explanation.

But love is not a contract with time.

Sometimes it is only a season

that teaches you

who you are capable of being.

And what I learned

is this:

I can love calmly.

I can love without shrinking.

I can love without trying to be saved.

That is not softness mistaken for weakness.

That is strength

without armor.

If he never returns,

I will still carry the quiet truth

of the woman I was beside him.

Whole.

Steady.

Loving

because I chose to.