It is a Discipline

Love, when it lasts this long,

stops being fire and turns into weather..

constant, unpredictable,

and stitched into the skin like a season

that never fully leaves.

You come close,

then retreat like tide from the shore,

and I learn to plant my feet in wet sand,

feeling the pull but refusing to follow.

I have stood through enough receding waters

to know that drowning and devotion

share the same taste of salt.

I love you without clutching.

Without names. Without permission.

It’s the kind of love that keeps its hands dirty..

digging, weeding, surviving drought

without asking the sky to change.

You have your silences..

weeks, sometimes months,

where you fold yourself away

like a letter never meant to be read.

And I, foolishly steadfast,

find poetry in your absences.

I tell myself that patience

isn’t weakness, it’s muscle memory..

a quiet strength that bends

but doesn’t break under waiting.

I’ve tried before to speak,

and the words blistered on my tongue.

You mistook honesty for pressure,

and I mistook your fear for distance.

Now I guard my truth

the way stone guards its heat after sundown

burning inward,

but cool to the touch.

You might think I’ve gone quiet out of indifference.

But no—silence is just how I keep from unraveling.

It’s how I keep loving you

without demanding to be seen.

Every time you drift away,

I stay..

not chasing, not rescuing

just rooted like an old tree

that’s learned to stand alone,

even in the ache of stormlight.

Sometimes I wonder

if you ever feel me in your still moments..

not as comfort,

but as the reminder that someone once cared

without asking for reward.

I don’t cradle your choices anymore.

They’re yours to hold,

to live with, to learn from.

But I’m near,

like the hum beneath the floorboards,

a quiet presence that neither flees

nor forgives too easily.

Love, in this form,

is a discipline.

It’s dirt under the nails,

and breath held too long.

It’s learning that wanting

and reaching

are not the same.

I will not beg the river to change direction.

But if it ever finds its way back,

it will find me here..

still honest, still steady,

still loving in the only way I know:

without possession,

without reward,

without end.