Measure

You don’t find me by accident.

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

If you found me,

you were looking for something real —

even if you told yourself otherwise or 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 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.

I’m not loud about what I offer.

I don’t have to be.

You miss me, miss us, understand what you lost… 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 hits.

The steadiness.The way our bodies felt together..

The way I didn’t play games.

The way I stayed soft

without being weak.The way I tried. Still try.Put in the fucking work.More then anyone I have ever met, my therapist says. 

You 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 miss me.

You will always miss me.
In that quiet,

almost unbearable way

where you realizeFuck. 

you don’t you won’t come across my kind of love

twice.

I’m the memory you don’t talk about

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

I’m not chaos.

I’m not fantasy.I’m not perfect.

I’m not the one who got away. I’m still here. We still reach for each other in dreams, in the middle of the night. That in between is the only place our love can safely stay. I know you see me for who I am and know I am far better than anyone you ever been with, but your body doesn’t know what to do with safe. So it runs. Rejects. Returns to toxic. I’d choose and find you in every lifetime. EVERY lifetime. But this one is so much better if you’d only come back. 
But I choose me because you can’t even choose yourself. And for the rest of your life you will know this is true: 

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.

That’s when it lands.

I wasn’t a phase.

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.