The Curve

Somewhere between a laugh and a glance,

you happened,

not like thunder,

but like forgetting I was ever afraid of storms.

I didn’t plan it.

You weren’t a goalpost or a dream board checkmark,

just a moment that kept stretching

its arms around mine

until it became a rhythm

I started humming in my sleep.

There was no map.

No shining sign that blinked,

This is the one.

Just little things,

your voice when it cracks in the middle of stories,

the way you look at people like they matter

(even when they don’t think they do),

how you pause mid-sentence to feel something

before saying it out loud.

And I—

I wasn’t waiting for love.

I had given it so many names

that none of them fit anymore.

I was just here,

tired and breathing,

when you reached for my hand

like you’d always known the shape of it.

Then,

everything shifted.

Like the air had been holding its breath

for us to arrive.

And somehow,

it wasn’t the falling that stunned me,

it was the staying.

How we showed up

again and again

with our cracked mornings

and messy hopes,

still choosing each other

when it would’ve been easier

not to.

Maybe it’s not mystery

that makes love real.

Maybe it’s how we stay

after the magic’s explained,

because even then,

even in the mundane,

you still feel like wonder.