Romantic Poem Refinement

*For You, Always*

I did not fall for you in a single moment,
it was slower than that, and truer.
In the way you laughed at my worst jokes,
in the way quiet felt easy beside you,
in a hundred small mornings I did not know
I would one day call home.

We have lived whole seasons inside each other,
not just the bright ones.
We have learned how to argue softly,
how to say sorry and mean it,
how to hold each other through the days
when the world felt too heavy to carry alone.

I remember who we were at the beginning —
uncertain, hopeful, a little afraid to want this much.
Look at us now.
Your hand still finds mine without thinking.
Your voice is still the first place I want to rest.

If love is a promise, then let this be mine:
not that life will always be easy,
not that we will never stumble,
but that I will choose you in the ordinary hours,
in the tired evenings, in the unremarkable Tuesdays,
as faithfully as I chose you in the beginning.

When we are old, and our stories are longer than our plans,
I want to sit beside you and still be amazed —
that out of all the lives I could have lived,
I got the one where I loved you,
and you, somehow, loved me back.

And if forever is a long time,
then I am grateful for that, too.
Because forever with you
does not feel like a sentence.
It feels like coming home.