There’s something about salt in the air
and your hand in mine
that makes the world feel softer
like maybe everything hard we’ve ever carried
was just meant to be set down here,
on this stretch of sun warmed sand.

I watch the sea catch fire in your eyes,
and I wonder how I ever lived
before knowing what it feels like
to see you lit by the sunset light
skin golden, hair wild,
laugh unguarded.
You are everything the ocean is:
unpredictable, powerful,
achingly beautiful.

Every wave that brushes the shore
writes your name into me again.
You, who make me braver.
You, who turn ordinary days into legend.
You, who remind me
that love can be both
a gentle tide and a roaring storm,
and I will take you in every form.

Here, away from it all,
I see us clearly.
I see future,
family,
freedom.
I see a life carved by salt and intention
not always easy,
but always ours.

So when we leave this place,
when the ocean becomes memory,
I will carry this moment
this island,
this version of us,
this sacred stillness
like a secret I wear close to my chest.

Because loving you
feels like coming home
to someplace I didn’t know
I’d been searching for.

I will speak your name with gentleness
not only when the air is still,
but even when thunder lives between us.
For even then, my love for you does not falter.
It only quiets itself
so it can listen.

I will never stop asking,
How can I love you better?
For you, I would be ten thousand times
more beautiful, more wise,
more patient, more kind.
If such a thing were possible,
I would become it.

Not for myself.
For me, I ask nothing.
But for you
I wish a thousandfold more of me.
I wish to be the kind of soft
you can rest your soul in.

I vow to grow not just old,
but whole with you
to be shaped by the seasons
of your spirit,
to remain endlessly curious
about the sacred country of your soul,
no matter how familiar it becomes.

I will trace the gentle furrows time leaves on your face
and think, always: How did I get this lucky?

When the world dims,
I will not simply stand beside you,
I will steady you.
And when joy finds us,
I will hold its shape with you,
quietly,
gratefully.

When your hands grow tired,
I will carry what they can’t.
Not out of duty,
but because loving you
makes strength feel like instinct.

I am the harbor
steady, unshifting
and you are the tide that forgets I drown too.

Sometimes you shift
and something in you sharpens.
You wear your hurt like a blade,
and I become the body that receives it.

You spit fire into my softness,
cutting through me with words
that slip too easily from your mouth,
then try to vanish with the sunrise.

You say you don’t remember,
that you didn’t mean it,
But something inside you does.

Because if love lives beneath the surface,
then so does resentment.
And I’m starting to wonder
which of the two fuels you more
when the bottle opens
or the storm begins.

You rage like you’re emptying something.
As if I’m a vessel meant to catch
what the world has done to you.
But I have my own weight,
and still,
I will carry yours.

I cradle the aftermath in my chest,
while you sleep off the wreckage.

And when you wake,
you speak soft,
apologize like love can erase the wound
without cleaning the blood.

But memory has teeth.
And mine won’t stop gnawing
at the edges of your promises.

How many times can I be the calm?
How many nights can I be the one
who swallows the thunder
so the house doesn’t shake?

You forget.
I remember.
You sleep.
I ache.
And still,
I remain.

God
or whatever is out there,
if you are

can you hear me?

I don’t need heaven.
I don’t even need hope right now.
I just need a moment
where the pain isn’t gnawing through me.

Please.

I’m so tired.
Not the kind of tired that sleep fixes
the kind that sinks into your bones
and tells you this is all you’ll ever know.
The kind that makes your chest ache
just from waking up again.

I’ve done the work.
The years of therapy,
the holding back the storm so I don’t lose people.
The pretending I’m fine
when I’m unraveling in silence.

And still,
no one sees how loud it is in here.

I feel like I’m drowning in plain sight,
and everyone just walks by
like I’m supposed to be able to breathe underwater.

If there is a God
if you’ve ever watched me cry on the bathroom floor,
if you’ve heard the prayers I never said out loud
then please.
Please.
I am begging you.

Just let it stop for a second.
Just one second without the ache.
Just one moment where I’m not
fighting myself to stay.

I don’t need answers.
I don’t need signs.
I just want to be held
by something kinder than this pain.

Let me put it down.
Let me rest.
Let me exist without bleeding.

There are days my heart is a raw thing,
a surface of open wounds stitched together by hope,
by every whispered promise that you love me enough to stay.

There are days I carry my feelings like glass,
stacked too high in trembling arms,
praying you won't reach too quickly,
or speak too sharply.

You always knew I bled easier than most.
You kissed the fragile parts,
said you loved their softness,
said you understood.

But sometimes your voice sharpens without warning,
a blade born of anger, or carelessness, or exhaustion,
and slices clean through the carefulness I built.
No armor can catch the words in time.

It happens fast
one sentence, thrown hard,
splintering the places that were already holding on by threads.

I know you don’t always mean it.
I know you think I’m too sensitive,
that my trembling arms should be stronger by now.

But inside me, there’s a battlefield you cannot see.
Every harsh word is a grenade.
Every sharp tone, an echo I cannot quiet.
My mind doesn’t heal with apologies;
it loops the moment over and over,
building walls where bridges used to be.

When your voice becomes a blade,
I’m not just hurt
I’m torn between defending myself and begging for mercy,
between running and staying,
between remembering your love and believing your anger.

I don’t want you to be the one who hurts me.
I want to be the one you speak gently to,
even when the world is heavy,
even when you're tired.
Especially then.

Because love should not sound like a weapon.
And I have already survived too many wars inside myself
to survive another one inside the walls of your voice.

There is a soft place inside me
where I keep the pieces of us,
where your laughter hums against the walls
and your love soaks through like sunlight.

It is the place I return to
when the world goes dark
the place I built
out of hope,
out of you.

But sometimes you speak
and your voice once a balm,
a soothing tonic,
becomes a blade,
sharp and sure
cutting through the carefulness.

You know where the fragile things live.
You have kissed every bruise,
charted every hollow.
How could you not know
how easily you break me?

I stand here holding the hurt,
like a child cupping water in trembling hands
trying not to spill,
trying to believe you didn’t mean it.

There is a special kind of ache
when the one you trust with your soul
throws stones
into the center of you
and doesn’t stay to watch the ripples.

I swallow the shards,
smile through the blood,
whisper to myself that your love is still here
that the wounds do not mean war,
that tenderness will return.

But inside,
I mourn a little each time,
for the version of me
who still believed
you would never be the one
to wound what you once promised to hold.

She left on a Friday,
when the world remembered a Savior’s sacrifice
and Heaven welcomed home one of its own.
A woman of quiet strength and unwavering faith,
whose prayers were soft armor
and whose love echoed like hymns through generations.

To pass on Good Friday
feels like a whisper from above,
a holy timing for a soul so rooted in God’s grace.
As if even her goodbye was a testimony.
Not an ending, but a homecoming.

She believed in eternal life,
and now she lives it.