call it grace

It’s a careful thing; though not delicate, per se.
It does not bruise easily,
but remembers where it’s been handled poorly.

Its edges may smooth over time
through ordinary misuse:
the dish left soaking one night too many,
the silence that stays past its welcome,
the small forgetting that never meant to wound.

Still, it’s persistent and unpretentious.

It waits, always, to be beckoned back, invited warmly in,
often not asking for more than a few soft words
spoken beneath cool sheets in the summer.

It's there even when the cicadas drone on far too long on those stifling moonless nights,
and your bodies are just a little too warm to hold one another;
sheets tangled at your feet.

You listen together, not speaking,
to the fan’s tired rattle,
to a car passing somewhere far away.

So instead you let only your legs touch;
an ankle, a calf, the briefest overlap.

Enough to be together,
enough to say I’m here,
as a breeze finally slips through the window
and cools what the day refused to loosen.

To love is to learn the habits, contours, and faults you hold in common,
to keep choosing each other, exactly as you are,
without being asked,
and call it grace.