Ordinary Light

You handed me the salt last night

before I even asked —

how long have you been learning me

like something worth the task?

*

A decade in, and still your laugh

arrives and rearranges

the furniture inside my chest.

Love isn’t grand. Love changes

*

nothing and everything at once —

a Tuesday, and your hand.

*

You fall asleep mid-sentence still.

You hum when you’re distracted.

You leave the cabinet doors wide open —

small crimes, unretracted.

*

And yet. And yet, I’d choose the mess,

the hum, the sleepy tumble

of a life lived pressed against yours —

ordinary, a little rumpled,

*

absolutely mine.

*

They write the songs for falling fast,

for fire, ache, and longing.

No one writes the quiet kind —

the love that feels like belonging

*

to a place you helped to build.

*

You handed me the salt. I kept it.

I keep everything you give me.

Ten years of salt. A life of Tuesdays.

That’s all I’ll ever need.

*******