What is This Love?

We are sitting and watching TV.
We have never done this before. Not in six months.
The sixteen year old on the screen earnestly professes his love to his crush, and you laugh.
You turn to me and say, “that’s exactly how it is. I thought I was in love when I was that age, but I wasn’t.”
I ask you why not and you pause.
“Maybe I was a little bit. Maybe it was some young version of love. But it was nothing like this.”
That might be a tired phrase, a version of a cliche told by lovers over the centuries, but it is new to me, and I smile slightly.
And what is this?
Fits of laughter, uncontrollable in places we should control, over the dumbest jokes you could imagine.
Terrible pictures I can’t stop scrolling through.
The dreariness of days where I watch you stressed and unsure and rushing through, until you remember what makes your life good, and you stop and smile and tell me you love me.
The space without words, with soft lights and goosebumps on skin.
A knee squeeze under the table after hours at dinner, to remind me we are still us and there is another world we can go to together.
I am anchor and you are wings. We move towards each other every day, even if we know this is something we could lose.
I know you are scared and so am I. I know that anything can happen. But I will wait with you to see what does.
