How to Build a Life With Someone

You start with small things:

A toothbrush in the wrong cup.

A shared closet that somehow

*still* leaves all your sweaters wrinkled.

The way she steals fries off your plate

but replaces them with the last bite of hers

because she knows you like it best.

Then come the storms:

The slammed doors.

The nights on the couch.

The terrible, necessary fights

where you learn love isn’t about never breaking—

it’s about choosing, again and again,

to put each other back together.

One day you’ll wake up

and realize her snoring

has become your favorite lullaby.

That the crease between her eyebrows

when she reads the news

is a landscape you know by heart.

That home isn’t a place anymore—

it’s the way she says *"You’re ridiculous"*

while laughing into your shoulder.

This is how forever happens:

Not in fireworks,

but in the quiet accumulation

of a thousand *I choose you’s*

whispered over burnt toast,

through head colds,

across grocery lists,

in the dark,

year after year.