Measure

No one finds me by accident.

You don’t just stumble into someone like me, call it coincidence.

If you found me,

you were looking for something real,

even if you told yourself otherwise.

Even if you weren’t ready for it.

I see everything.

Not in a dramatic way.

Just in the way a woman sees

when she’s paying attention

with her whole body.

I understand more than I say.

Always.

I don’t perform for love.

I don’t compete for it.

I don’t chase it down the street

trying to convince it to stay.I don’t have to.

I stay.

I mean what I say.

I show up steady.

Honest.

Present.

I don’t waver when things get honest.

I don’t panic when it gets real.

And that’s the part

most people don’t recognize

until later.

You won’t mean to compare.

It won’t be cruel.

It won’t even be conscious.

It will just happen.

The first time you kiss someone else’s lips

and they’re soft

but not electric ?

you’ll feel the difference.

The first time you go down on someone new?

and it’s good

but it doesn’t undo you —

you’ll hesitate.

Not because something is wrong.

Because something is missing.

The first time someone tells you they love you

in the first couple months,

wants to meet your kids

like it’s casual,

like it’s just the next step 

you’ll feel the weight of what that really means outside of me.

You’ll remember what it felt like

to have someone who didn’t rush the word,

who carried it carefully

like glass.

You’ll remember poetry in the dark.

My voice reading it to you in bed.

Fingers tracing the whole universe on your arm

like I was mapping something sacred. But I was.

You’ll go to concerts.

Try every one of her drinks.

Sit across from someone

at every new restaurant in town.

And you’ll smile.

But you’ll remember

who wanted all of it with you.

Who leaned in.

Who paid attention.

Who studied you.

Who tried.

Still tries.

Put in the fucking work.

You’ll think about the conversations.

The way I saw through you

and didn’t flinch.

The way I loved you

without making you earn it.

And you’ll miss me.

Not loudly.

Not dramatically.

In that quiet,

almost unbearable way

where you realize —

you don’t

you won’t
you can’t

come across my kind of love

twice.

You’ll understand it

in the middle of the night.

When the house is quiet.

When your phone is dark.

When there’s nothing left

to distract you from your own thoughts.

That’s when it lands.

The steadiness.

The way our bodies felt together.

The way I stayed soft without being weak.

I’m not chaos.

I’m not fantasy.

I’m not perfect.

I wasn’t a phase.

I’m the memory you don’t talk about

because it still sits too close to your heart and chest.

You realize it

when you’re lying awake

in the middle of the night

and there’s no one there

who feels the way I did.

I’m the woman

you think about

when it’s quiet and you can’t pretend anymore.

And for the rest of your life you will know this is true:

I’m the woman

you will measure everyone else against.