For the Man I Married

I didn't marry the man who brought flowers. I married the man who noticed I was crying in the kitchen and didn't ask why— just stood there and washed the dishes until I was ready to talk. Husband is a strange word. It sounds like a job title for something that is actually a daily choice to love someone who leaves their socks on the bathroom floor like small cotton monuments to chaos. You are not the love poem I expected. You are the love poem that showed up— quieter, funnier, with worse hair and better hands. You hold me the way you hold everything: a little too tight, a little too long, like you're afraid I'll figure out you're just a nervous boy in a grown man's shoes. I figured it out years ago. I stayed anyway. That's the poem. That's the whole love story: I saw you clearly and stayed.