We spent years learning the language of storms. Previous loves like lightning bolts—bright, loud, but gone before the thunder settled. We learned how to rebuild our worlds after the skys split open repeatedly. How to sweep up glass from promises dropped so carelessly on floors. We thought love was supposed to hurt a little. Maybe even a lot. Maybe it was supposed to leave hairline cracks running through your ribs like fault lines waiting for the next earthquake. Then you arrived. 
Without thunder. No grand entrance. 
No storm warnings. Just quiet. You sat beside me…
like you had always been there, like the empty space next to me had been saving your shape. You didn’t ask me to be softer.
You didn’t ask me to be smaller. You didn’t try to tame the child in me or the wildfires burning in my chest. You just sat and watched the flames dance around like they were beautiful. And for the first time in my life, someone didn’t reach out to see if they could survive touching it. You simply stayed. We had been loved before. But never like this. Never by someone who held the past like something fragile, instead of something broken. We didn’t promise forever with loud declarations. We promised it in quiet ways. The way your hand found mine without asking. The way you stood beside me when the ghosts of our pasts started whispering our names again. The way you looked at me like survival was not a tragedy— but a miracle. We used to believe the ones who broke us would be the center of our stories. But love has a strange way of rewriting endings. Because the one who healed me, was never the one who shattered me. You were the one who picked up the pieces and said, “Flawless.”