August 22nd — One Year of Loving You

The way you exist

when nobody is asking you

to be anything.

I had always been someone

who noticed things,

but knowing you taught me

to look closer.

To sit with a feeling

long enough to understand it.

To find language for things

I once would have left unnamed.

A song became something

I wanted you to hear.

A beautiful place became somewhere

I wondered what it would look like

with you beside me.

Even ordinary moments

became something worth remembering

if, for only a moment,

I wished I could tell you about them.

Suddenly, there were poems

in places I hadn’t known

to look for them.

I found myself creating more

because loving you gave me

so much more I wanted to say.

And if loving you

has been beautiful,

knowing you

is what made that love possible.

Your ambition made me question

where I had grown comfortable.

Watching you reach for more

reminded me that I could, too.

You never had to become

the reason for my becoming—

but somehow, knowing you

made me want more for myself.

Even in the silence,

what knowing you awakened in me

has not disappeared.

You reminded me

to expect more from myself.

To reach further.

To imagine a life

beyond the one

I had grown accustomed to.

And perhaps that is another thing

I have had the privilege of knowing:

that sometimes a person

can change the way you see yourself

simply by allowing you

to see what is possible.

A year ago today,

I met someone

I didn’t know

I would someday be grateful

simply to have known.

I met someone

I didn’t know would leave

such an impression

on the way I see the world.

I met someone

who would teach me to look closer,

at beauty,

at love,

at myself,

at the life I still want to build.

A year has not kept us

where we started.

We have known each other

beneath kinder skies

and through seasons

neither of us knew were coming.

There were moments

when I could reach for you,

and moments when loving you

meant knowing not to.

There were things that changed

that I wished hadn’t.

Things left unsaid.

Distances I did not know

we would have to learn.

And yet,

I still wouldn’t trade

knowing you.

I cannot promise

that life will return us

to who we were.

I cannot promise

what another year

will make of us.

I only know

what this one

has made of me.

Whatever I was allowed

to be in your life,

I tried to be it

with love.

And now August

has found me again,

though not where

I once imagined

either of us would be.

There are still things

I wish I could tell you.

Parts of my life

I instinctively turn toward you

to share,

before remembering

that right now,

I cannot.

Maybe gratitude

doesn’t require proximity.

Maybe I can miss you

without asking the distance

to become something

it isn’t ready to become.

Maybe I can be grateful

that I met you

without knowing

what comes next.

Because I don’t know

where another year

will take you.

I don’t know

where it will take me.

I don’t know

what we will be

when August finds us again.

But I know this:

if I could return

to August 22nd

knowing everything

that would follow,

the beautiful parts,

the painful ones,

and everything in between—

I would still choose

to meet you.

If someone had stopped me

that day

and told me

how much loving you

would ask of my heart,

how much I would create,

how much I would learn,

how much I would change,

how deeply I would feel,

and how sometimes

loving you would mean

standing at a distance

when all I wanted

was to move closer…

I would listen.

I would believe them.

And then,

knowing everything

I know now,

I would still walk toward you

on August 22nd.