u/Ok_Damage41

There’s a kind of love that shows up early and stays late,

even when it’s inconvenient, even when it’s tired.

It doesn’t ask for applause. It just keeps signing in.

I’d cross out my own plans in ink

if your name needed the space.

I’d learn the shape of your silence

just so I could translate what you’re too stubborn to say out loud.

And that sounds dramatic until it isn’t

until it’s 2 a.m. and the world feels like it’s holding its breath,

and all you can think is:

if they’re okay, I can deal with anything else.

That’s the part people skip in songs.

Not the butterflies. Not the fireworks.

But the quiet decision to stay useful

in a life that doesn’t always feel easy to carry.

Love like that doesn’t make you blind.

It just makes everything else look less important

than one heartbeat you’ve decided to care about.

And yeah, it can get messy.

People forget themselves in it sometimes,

as if devotion is supposed to erase the person doing the devoting.

But if it’s real, it doesn’t demand you disappear.

It just keeps choosing,

over and over again,

without needing to be asked.

Fifteen days left, then the wait gets real, like time forgot how normal feels.

Months stretched out like stubborn wire,

dragging slow through tired desire.

I count each night, I lose each day,

like they were built to drift away.

Your name keeps showing up uninvited,

like a song I never decided.

But soon this distance loses its nerve,

it bends, it breaks, it fails to serve.

Fifteen days, then I cross that line,

and finally you’re right there, mine.

You keep chasing approval like it’s some limited edition drop,

as if strangers get to decide whether you’re allowed to not stop.

Spoiler: they don’t. They’re barely qualified to run their own day,

yet somehow you hand them the pen and ask what you’re “worth” anyway.

Self-love isn’t loud, it doesn’t beg for a crowd,

it doesn’t fold itself small just to make someone else proud.

It’s waking up and not declaring war on your face in the mirror,

it’s saying “I exist” without needing applause in your ear.

It’s choosing yourself without turning it into a debate,

not waiting for permission like it’s some sacred gate.

Some days it’s soft, some days it barely survives,

but it still shows up quietly and keeps you alive.

So stop auctioning your value to whoever walks by.

You’re not a project someone else gets to qualify.

You’re already here, already real, already enough in the mess

not perfect, not polished, just not for them to assess.

Self worth is not a receipt you earn

after you’ve bent yourself into something useful.

Nobody hands it out at the door

like a prize for being easy to deal with.

It’s not in the way people react to you

on a good day when you’re convenient,

or disappear when you’re not.

Most of what gets called “value”

is just other people’s moods

wearing a serious face.

But here’s the part nobody markets well:

you don’t get assigned worth.

You don’t audition for it.

You don’t lose it when you mess up

like it’s some fragile object in your pocket.

You’re here. That’s the whole ugly, simple fact.

No performance review required.

The world will keep trying to turn you into a scoreboard,

then act confused when you don’t fit the numbers.

Don’t cooperate with that system.

It’s not even smart enough to be consistent.

You’re not a reward for being “good enough.”

You’re not a punishment for being difficult.

You’re just you,

still standing there

despite everything insisting you should shrink.

We met where strangers go to overshare,

on a thread stitched from six-word stories,

half confessions, half jokes nobody should admit.

“Found you,” one wrote, six words too honest.

“Still here,” came back, like that meant anything in a world built on disappearing posts.

We loved in fragments, in comments, in edits,

refreshing each other like a page that never loads right on the first try.

Somewhere between anonymity and too much truth,

two usernames stopped feeling like usernames.

Not fate. Not destiny. Just latency and loneliness

finally syncing up at the same stupid time.

Loving you from far away

is learning how to hold someone

without hands ever touching

It’s your name showing up on a screen

and somehow that being enough

to shift the whole mood of a day

I measure time in “until next call”

and pretend patience is something I naturally have

instead of something I practice badly

There’s a quiet kind of devotion in it

not loud, not convenient

just steady

like a light left on in another room

I talk to you in fragments

good morning

good night

and everything I didn’t know how to say in between

Missing you becomes routine

not because it hurts less

but because I stopped arguing with it

Still, love travels

even when it has to borrow signal

even when it arrives late

even when it drops out mid-sentence

And every time you come back through the line

it feels like the distance didn’t win anything

not even a little.