I’m letting myself love you, taking your pain as my own.

I’m letting myself like you, receiving your little gestures as if they are not little at all.

The way you tuck my hair behind my ear—

which is remarkable because I have not had hair long enough to tuck in more than a decade.

I kept it short and spiky back then. Armor disguised as style. A quiet warning to wandering men.

Now it falls past my eyes and ears and you move it gently, like I am worth handling with care.

It undoes me—

the simplicity of that touch. It feels like being a child again, before I learned to wear armour…

Every love-struck poet I’ve ever read understood what I am just beginning to experience in my fiftieth year.

What it means to fall in love without falling apart. Though at this age, it feels less like falling and more like rising— like a conscious step forward. I am letting myself because I finally feel safe to.

You stood outside the gate last night and rose at five a.m. again today, just to walk beside me.

You said you came to walk me home because you worried about the stray dogs, and because you had not seen enough of me. No one has ever said that to me before without wanting something.

You stand tall in the world, but when you hug me you drop down so your arms come under mine and our eyes meet…I feel met and held simultaneously, as if the girl in me and the woman in me are gathered together at the same time.

I had made peace with being alone long ago. Ten years single and I was ready to become the old cat lady.

But I also knew—

I would never heal relational wounds without a relationship

So I wrote a list on the flight from Hong Kong with all the green flags that I could trust when I met you.

You appeared the very next day, bright eyed and earnest, in pink shorts striding into the cafe.

I still have small tremors sometimes—

what if

what if

what if.

It’s an awfully big risk to love after you have spent years mending your own wabi-sabi heart.

But then there was the fight. Your fear of being misunderstood met my fear of being abandoned and we burned the whole house down for three hours.

I left.

You spiraled.

We both rehearsed loss.

But I just could not imagine my life without you anymore.

That was the moment I knew.

When I came back you were wrecked, certain I was already gone. That is when I met your terrified small-self—your little boy. The pain in your eyes matched mine.

We unpacked the misunderstanding like two careful surgeons. Sitting on a pink loveseat—the antonymy of our hearts —we named our triggers. We vowed to learn each other’s storms. That was holier than any sunset, on any date.

Your goofiness, your awkward dorky joy, it all gives me permission to lay down my performance. You are always gentle; so gentle. Always slow. My nervous system can finally breathe—finally settle.

This is what the poets meant. Not fireworks. Not obsession.

Just the ordinary, extraordinary of a walk home in the dark, hair tenderly tucked behind an ear, and two frightened people choosing to stay.

~

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