The Inch

The Inch

I did not fall in love. That's not the word.
Falling is fast, and no one picks the ground.
I walked toward you like moonlight across water,
and you kept walking too, until we found

a place that neither of us had mapped out—
not your way, and not mine, some third direction
we only learned by going there together,
through wrong turns, and the patience of correction.

You like the window open. I like it shut.
We sleep now with it cracked an inch or two.
That inch is not a loss. It is the width
of everything I've learned from loving you.

I have no diamonds to lay down at your feet,
no house with columns, nothing new to drive.
I have the hour after the dishes are done,
when nothing has to happen, and we're alive

together on the same old sagging couch,
your cold feet in my lap, the TV low,
and I glance over—you're already looking—
and that's the richest thing I'll ever know.

Love isn't the fire they sing about in songs.
Fire takes the wood and leaves you in the cold.
It's slower heat: a hand that finds a hand
beneath the blanket, night by night, grown old.

It's saying sorry first when I was right,
because the one who wins just sleeps alone.
It's you, who never asked me to be different,
and me, more patient than I'd been on my own.

I don't love you for how you make me feel—
feelings come and go, the way the weather does.
I love you on the flat gray Tuesday mornings
when there's no reason to, and no because.

If there's a secret, it is only this:
I never finished walking. I still do.
Each morning I wake up and cross the room
and nudge the window open, and come to you.