I dreamt of marriage as a string of poetry, sweet everythings whispered in my ear—phrases that would flutter my heart and leave me breathless in the morning, hungry for bed at night. I imagined folded notes tucked into drawers. Hands pulling me into the kitchen just to dance. Grand declarations with a boombox. Dramatic longing. A love that announced itself loudly and often.
But that is not your love.
Your love is quiet. Filled to the brim with small, conscious moments of thoughtfulness built by your hands: a homemade meal, cappuccinos in bed, handcrafted jewelry, a warm fire, your body moving through the house anticipating needs before they become words. These religious acts of service are performed every day, multiple times a day, with a bright smile and a warm hug like devotion itself has taken human form.
Sometimes I miss noticing them. Or worse, I mistake their steadiness for mundanity because they do not arrive wrapped in the kind of romance I once imagined love was supposed to look like.
When I’m feeling low, I find myself desperately searching for hidden letters beneath pillows that were never promised to me. Lamenting the absence of words dancing in my ears while simultaneously drinking the coffee you carried upstairs with your sleepy eyes and careful hands.
I don’t know why the brain creates barriers like this when my body feels no difference between your sweeping gestures of creation and a monologue of prose inside the pages of a book. They light my heart and tingle my skin all the same.
And still, I pine. For more. For different. For translation. My asks create confusion because you are trying so hard already. Loving me so earnestly in the language most natural to you while I stand there searching for subtitles.
Not so ironically, I love you in almost the opposite way. I offer overflowing sentences that cannot be contained. Long eye contact. Words spilling out of me faster than I can organize them. Tiny declarations scattered across our world. You blink when you read them. Smile softly. Fold the sentiment away with a clipped thank you. Then move toward another task. The tears of happiness I secretly anticipate never arrive. And I’m left in the same fragile place wondering: why wasn’t my offering enough to move you the way yours moves me?
I suppose this is the real journey of marriage.
Not finding someone who loves exactly as we do, but learning how to recognize devotion even when it arrives wearing unfamiliar clothes. Learning that care can sound like silence. That loyalty can look like routine. That consistency is its own form of poetry.
And maybe love was never meant to be the effortless collision of perfectly matched languages. Maybe it is the sacred practice of continuing to reach for one another through misunderstanding. Through missed cues. Through failed attempts. Through the exhausting vulnerability of saying: this is the best way I know how to love right now. Please keep teaching me you.
What I treasure most about you is not perfection. It is your devotion to trying. You will fail a thousand times and then fail once more after that, never wavering from the goal of revealing your heart to me the best you can. Never hardening. Never turning away. Never withholding effort simply because understanding feels difficult.
And slowly, through all these years, I am learning to see you more clearly too. To recognize that every meal is a letter. Every repaired thing a sonnet. Every cup of coffee a vow renewed before sunrise.
You have been whispering love to me all along. Just not in the language I expected.
Thank you for your steady hands. Your patient heart. Your willingness to keep learning me while allowing me to keep learning you. Thank you for building a life with me instead of simply performing romance for me. What we have is less cinematic than the fantasies I carried as a girl. It is something far more difficult. Far more sacred. A real love. A practiced love. A human love.
And after all these years, through every misunderstanding and beautiful attempt, I would still choose you again.
Happy (belated) anniversary, my love.
