Lunchbox

I used to think intimacy
was someone seeing you naked.

Now I think
it’s someone reminding you
that you left your lunchbox on the counter

Love,
it turns out,
is deeply unglamorous.

It is,
“Did you take your medicine?”

It is,
“Lean forward.
Let me dry you off

It is someone
learning your body
like it is both a map
and a weather report.

You knew
where rain collected.

Between my toes.

Behind my smile.

Inside the small pockets
where grief likes to convince the heart
it has been abandoned.

You taught me
that survival
is a ritual.

That healing
doesn’t arrive wearing wings.

Sometimes it arrives
holding a towel.

And it whispers come here

Let me keep you warm

Sometimes
it sounds like your name
spoken from another room,

“Did you remember?”

And somehow
you always remembered
what I asked you to remember.

The stories I only told once.

The songs that made me cry
for reasons I couldn’t explain.

The names
I never wanted spoken again.

You collected
the scattered pieces of me
like they were seashells
instead of evidence.

You wanted to know
the monsters.

Not to slay them.

Just to learn
their names.

To know
which ones only came out
when the room got quiet.

Which ones wore my mother’s voice.

Which ones borrowed my own.

You held me
like unopened mail.

Not because you were afraid
of what was inside—

because you believed
every envelope deserved
to be opened slowly.

Like every page
had earned
its own breath.

You loved me
with the kind of passion
that never confused urgency
for devotion.

The kind that understood
there is nothing more erotic
than being remembered.

Not the shape of my body.

The shape of my fears.

The exact sentence
that could pull me back
from disappearing into myself.

I have kissed people
who could memorize
every inch of my skin

and still forget
where I was hurting.

But you—

you knew
my healing
had hiding places.

You searched for them anyway.

You dried
the places
that stayed damp with yesterday.

You reminded me
that medicine
is not weakness.

That asking for help
isn’t surrender.

That even a body
trying its hardest
to fall apart
can be convinced
to stay.

Maybe that’s what love is.

Not butterflies.

Not fireworks.

Not the movies.

Maybe love
is simply finding
the one person
who learns
all the ordinary ways
you keep yourself alive—

and loves you enough

to carry those instructions

inside their own heart

as if one day

they might have to remind you

who you are

when you’ve forgotten

how to remember yourself.