I Loved You Like an Earthquake

I loved you like an earthquake,

Not the gentle tremor before dawn,

But the shudder that splits the earth wide,

Opening chasms no one warned me about.

You came in,

A quiet rumble at first,

Then, a roar beneath my feet—

My foundation shifting with every word,

Every touch,

Every laugh.

I loved you like a fault line,

Constant, jagged,

Telling stories no map could chart,

Stories of broken cities

And whispered apologies that could never be enough.

In the moments when we stood still,

The world seemed perfect,

A calm that hid the tremors,

But I always knew—

The next aftershock was coming.

I loved you with the force of destruction,

Because love, in its truest form,

Is not the softness of a summer rain,

But the wildness of a storm

That sweeps through the heart

And leaves nothing untouched.

In loving you,

I learned how to rebuild,

How to find beauty in the wreckage,

How to fill the cracks with my own hands.

But you,

You loved me like the calm after the storm,

Like the silence that follows,

The world holding its breath

Before it starts all over again.