The Morning After

They don’t tell you about the silence.

Not in the movies. Not in the stories.

But for us, it was always the morning after.

That’s when I knew you still loved me.

You see, we used to fight.. not often, but hard.

The kind of fights where no one really wins, where words feel heavier than fists and the silence afterward rings louder than any door slam.

And I had go to bed angry, eyes open in the dark, staring at the ceiling like it could somehow hold me better than you did that night.

But then morning would come. Soft. Slow. Almost apologetic.

And every time.. without fail.. you had kiss my forehead.

Like a habit. Like a promise.

Like saying, I still choose you, even after all that.

You never thought I knew.

But I always did.

I had keep my eyes closed just long enough for you to think I was still asleep. Just long enough to hold the moment between us..that quiet, sacred thing..a little longer.

I never told you how much I loved those mornings.

I didn’t want you to know that I waited for them. That I needed them.

Because that was our way..wasn’t it?

We didn’t say “I’m sorry.”

We made bad coffee instead. We cut fruit into strange shapes and stacked it like some clumsy mosaic of forgiveness.

I made you the worst cup imaginable. Bitter, too strong, barely warm.

But I served it to you like I was offering my heart in a chipped ceramic mug.

And you drank it. Every time.

With compliments so sweet they made me forget the sting from the night before.

The thing about love, you once told me, is that it lives in small things. In staying. In showing up the next morning.

I think of that every time I wake up alone now.

I had sit across from you at the kitchen table, biting into grapes while the sunlight tried its best to forgive us.

You’d look at me like I was the only human thing that made sense to you.

You’d say, You know, you’re the most beautiful when there’s nothing on you.

And I’d laugh. Pretend to roll my eyes. But inside, I’d melt..because you meant it. You always did.

And God, that day I deep-cleaned your apartment..remember that?

Five hours of scrubbing your life like it was my own. I wanted you to come home to something that felt safe.

You walked in, looked around, and said, This is too perfect for us to mess up tonight. Let’s leave, come back, and pretend we’ve never seen it before.

And we did.

We dressed up for no one, stepped out like fools in love with a world that never asked for us.. and didn’t matter, because we had each other.

We were wild in the quietest ways, I wrote once.

And it’s true.

We were never loud lovers.

We whispered through gestures. We forgave through breakfast.

We stitched each other back together with the softest thread of everyday tenderness.

And now..

Now, I wonder when, or if, those mornings will come again.

Because those mornings weren’t just after fights.

They were our resurrection.

Proof that love doesn’t have to be perfect.. just present.

You kissed my forehead, and I swear, it healed every place your words had bruised the night before.

And me? I made you coffee so bad it became a ritual.

That was us.. broken poetry, still beautiful somehow.

Love doesn’t leave in the morning, I once read.

And you didn’t. Not then.

The morning after was always good.

And that’s how I know..

We were, too.