A letter for the woman who is my heart
Some people are loved. You are adored — carefully, loudly, permanently. This is every word I could never fit into one goodnight.
scroll, my love
Before anything else
"Before you, I thought home was a place. Then you looked up and smiled — and I understood. Home is a person.
Home is you."
I. The softness of you
The world is loud, and hard, and in a hurry — and then there is you. You carry a softness that nothing has managed to spoil, and you offer it on purpose, every single day. Being loved by you feels like being forgiven for everything I ever got wrong before you arrived. You don't just make my life softer, Natalie. You make me believe people can be good, because you are.
still, always, more
II. Your laugh
I have heard music in cathedrals and waves at midnight, and none of it holds what your laugh holds. When you really laugh — the kind that bends you forward and steals your breath — something in me goes quiet and thanks God out loud. If I could keep only one sound for the rest of my life, it would be that one. Played on repeat. Forever.
still, always, more
III. Us
Look at us. Two ordinary people who somehow became each other's miracle. I don't need the whole world to understand what we are — I only need you to know this: choosing you is the easiest thing I have ever done, and I will keep choosing you, in every season, on purpose, out loud, for the rest of my life. You are not part of my plans, Natalie. You are the reason I make them.
still, always, more
IV. The ordinary dark
It isn't the big days I think about most. It's you, in a soft sweater on an ordinary night, smiling like the dark personally asked you to brighten it. That's when it hits me — I get to love this woman. Not her highlight reel. Her. Give me your cold tea and your tired Tuesdays, your mirror selfies and your mismatched socks. I want the whole unglamorous, unrepeatable, utterly ours forever of you.
and every day after
A thousand little forevers
What I promise
I promise to love you out loud — in rooms full of people, and in the quiet where it's just us.
I promise your heart will never have to guess where it stands with me.
I promise to protect your softness, and never once take advantage of it.
I promise that when you look for me — in a crowd, in a crisis, in a decade — I will already be there.
I promise to fall for you again on the days you feel least lovable. Especially those days.
A little game, my love
Every heart you catch has something written inside it. No losing allowed — you already won me.
catch my hearts
Ten of my hearts are about to fall. Catch them, my love — each one is carrying something I've been meaning to tell you.
If forever has a beginning, Natalie, it looked like you. If it has a name, it sounds like yours. Take my hand — I have already given you the rest of me.
Yours now and forever,
Malachi
and then some