I did not love you for what was easy.

Had ease been my desire,
I would have remained untouched
a creature of still water,
answering only to myself.

But you arrived like distance given form,
beautiful in the way horizons are:
always visible,
never fully mine.

And so I learned a new devotion
not to presence,
but to absence.

To empty rooms still shaped by your name.
To hours stretched thin with expectation.
To speaking into silence
and calling it faith.

What a peculiar offering, this love.

To choose someone
whose orbit is wider than your reach,
and remain anyway.

You are not cruel.

Only far.

And I
perhaps more foolish than faithful
have made an altar of the waiting.

Still, I stay.

As tides return to shores
that never once asked them to.

Not because it is equal.
Not because it is easy.

But because somewhere
between sacrifice and longing,
I mistook endurance for devotion.

And loved you there.


Penned by my hand on the 2nd of Valnuary, in the year 1003 AF.