a soft ache

It’s tender, somehow, that I call you when it aches, when something fragile in me tightens and my voice turns to glass. It’s tender because you remain, even in the crooked hush of all I cannot name. I weep, and it isn’t only sorrow, it’s something opening wide, a fracture where the light slips in. It still aches, yes, but you fill the hollow in my chest when your words falter, and you stay anyway. When you reach for me without knowing how, with quiet, unguarded hands that choose me still. And I laugh, even through the ache, a soft, trembling laughter, as if my heart already knows this, too, is love.