Poems About Trust and Love

When you stand in front of everyone you know and a few people you don't and say the words that have been said a billion times before— they will still feel new. Because the words are not the promise. The promise is the look. The one that says: I have seen the version of you that nobody else gets to see— the 3 a.m. version, the crying-in-the-car version, the version that can't find the keys and blames the universe— and I am choosing that one too. Marriage is not a feeling. It's a decision you make on a Tuesday when the romance has left the building and what remains is a person who loads the dishwasher wrong but shows up every single time it matters. You will fight about things that don't deserve the energy. You will forget the anniversary at least once. You will wonder, on the hard days, what it would be like to only have to think about yourself. And then you'll see them across the room at someone else's wedding, laughing with your mother, and something will remind you why you chose this— not because it's easy but because it's the most interesting thing you've ever done. So here's the truth they don't put in the vows: I will be bored with you. I will be boring with you. And I will choose that— deliberately, repeatedly, joyfully— because boring with you is better than exciting with anyone else.

Marriage is a long argument about the thermostat. No—listen. It's not about the thermostat. It's about the fact that one of you is always cold and the other is always right and the thermostat is just the scoreboard. Marriage is two people who chose each other before they knew what choosing meant. Before the debt, the in-laws, the slow discovery that the person you married chews like that and will chew like that forever. And yet. Marriage is also the hand that finds yours under the blanket during the movie that neither of you is watching because the couch is warm and the dog is between you and this is more than enough. It's knowing which fight is worth the fight and which one you let go because losing is sometimes the most loving thing you can do with a Tuesday. It's the hospital waiting room where you held my hand and said nothing and the nothing was perfect. It's the apology that starts with: I'm not saying I was wrong. And ends with: but I'm sorry you had to deal with me being right so aggressively. Marriage is not a romance. It's better. It's a partnership between two flawed people who decided that their flaws fit together well enough to build a life and call it home. Fifteen years. The thermostat is at 72. Neither of us won. Both of us stayed.

Quédate, no porque yo te lo pida, sino porque la noche es más larga cuando no estás y el café de la mañana no sabe igual si no hay nadie a quien contarle el sueño raro que tuve. Quédate como se queda la lluvia— sin pedir permiso, sin explicar por qué eligió esta ventana y no otra. Yo no sé hablar de amor con palabras limpias. El mío viene con las manos sucias, con migas en la cama, con la puerta del baño que nunca cierra bien. Pero es real. Tan real como el sonido de tus llaves en la cerradura a las siete de la tarde— ese sonido que mi cuerpo reconoce antes que mi mente. No te ofrezco un amor de película. Te ofrezco el amor de martes: la compra del supermercado, el "¿apagaste la luz?", el dormirnos sin decirnos nada porque el silencio entre nosotros no es vacío— es confianza. Quédate. No por siempre. No por obligación. Quédate hoy. Y mañana te lo vuelvo a pedir y pasado también hasta que quédate se convierta en la palabra más gastada y más querida de este idioma que inventamos entre los dos.