What is Love

Love is not the blaze of passion,
nor the sharp edge of longing.
It does not demand,
it does not keep score.
Love is the quiet placing
of your trembling heart
into hands you trust more than your own.

Love is gentleness
when the world has turned cruel—
the hush of your touch on my most frightened days,
your steady voice
when all I could hear was noise and harm.
Love is giving all of yourself
without ledger or bargain,
and calling it joy.

Love is never cruelty,
never rage that lingers,
never the cold shape of absence.
It is the courage to be fragile,
to let another guard
what is most breakable in you.

Love is knowing every quirk and shadow,
and choosing them still.
It is listening when weariness bows your head,
the blanket drawn over my shoulders
before I knew I was cold.
Love is being received
unchanged—
and cherished beyond deserving.

Love is not deceit.
Not unkindness.
Never small or shrinking.
It is the holy risk of devotion,
the way one soul leans toward another
and grows.

Love is warm toast and waiting coffee,
footsteps I could recognize among thousands,
the sacred ordinary of our days.
It is knowing your ways—
even the ones that made me smile through exasperation—
and finding in them
my whole world.

Love is this:
my heart, forever resting
in your hands.