Short Romantic Poems for Her to Make Her Cry

She walks like she knows something the room doesn't. Her laugh is the sound of a door opening somewhere you want to go. She doesn't try to be beautiful. She just forgets to be anything else. When she reads, her lips move slightly— not enough to hear, just enough to prove the words are alive inside her. She carries her sadness like a library book— quietly, close to the chest, always meaning to return it. I don't know how to tell her that the room changes temperature when she enters. So I write this instead— short, like the breath she leaves me with.

I didn't know I was looking until I found you— the way you don't know you're cold until someone hands you a blanket. You laugh with your whole face. Your eyes do most of the work— they crinkle like paper that's been folded with love and opened too many times. My girlfriend, my girl, my person— the one who steals my hoodies and calls it sharing. The one who argues about restaurants for forty minutes then picks the first one I suggested. You make me brave in the stupid way— the way that says things out loud, the way that cries at movies, the way that loves without a backup plan. If someone asked me to describe you I'd fail— not because you're indescribable but because the best things about you are verbs, not adjectives: the way you listen, the way you stay, the way you make the ordinary feel chosen.

I love you the way women have always loved women— quietly at first, then all at once, then with a fury that rewrites the rules. You are beautiful in the way that has nothing to do with beauty— the way your voice drops when you're serious, the way your hands move when you're excited, the way you take up space like you finally decided you're allowed to. They will ask: Who's the man? And we will laugh because the question answers itself— neither, both, who cares, pass the salt. I didn't choose you the way they say people choose. I recognized you— the way you recognize a song you've heard before but can't name, a place you've been before but can't find on any map. This love is not a lesser version of something. This love is the whole thing— unabridged, unapologetic, wearing its own ring on its own finger and owing no explanation to anyone.