I Keep Falling In Love With You Poem by Martin Greyford

Sometimes when you are asleep, I lie there and listen to you breathe, and the sound folds around the room like a warm blanket I never knew I needed. There is a hush that only arrives when you drift away, a quiet that does not threaten or accuse, a quiet that forgives the day for all the ways it failed to be gentle. I count your breaths like stars I can reach, and in the soft rise and fall of your chest I hear tomorrow promising to try again. I am not praying, but something in me bows.

Did you know that your hand reaches out for me even then, when dreams are doing their private work and the mind is busy with its secret gardens. Your fingers move with a memory of me that seems older than both of us, as if the body knows what the brain is shy to say. You find me in the dark of the night like it is the most natural thing you have ever done, like water remembering the shape of the riverbed. It feels like being chosen by instinct, blessed without ceremony.

In that small motion, you tell me the longest story. You speak without sound about every afternoon that cracked, every morning we mended, every stupid argument that turned into a bridge instead of a wall. You tell me about the weary bones that still carry hope, and the hungry heart that still believes in home. When your palm meets mine, the world shrinks to a single point of light, and I can bear it all again.

I think of the daylight versions of us, the smiles we lend to strangers, the names we answer to, the tasks we cross off, the brave faces we polish and present. And then I compare them with these midnight selves who do not posture, who do not bargain, who simply reach. The night is honest like that. It takes the show away and leaves the truth, soft and supposed to be here. I fall in love with you all over again for the way you are without trying.

I keep secrets with your breath. I tuck away each steady inhale like a note in the pocket of a coat I will wear when the wind is cruel. There will be days when you are far, or we are tired, or the world is too big and the rooms too small, and on those days I will pull out these saved sounds and they will remind me that love is not always fireworks. Sometimes love is a reliable engine, humming along, ferrying us through the dark.

I wonder where you go when your eyes are closed, what landscapes your thoughts wander through, what old hurts you walk around, what old joys you sit beside. I hope some small part of me is there in that private country, not as a guard or a guide, but as a lamp left on in a window. If you are lost, I want to be the warm glow that says, come back, there is soup on the stove, there is a place to rest your head.

There is a tenderness I feel at night that is almost a grief, as if love is always a little bit of heartbreak because it is always a little bit of loss, too. Every second I adore you is a second I cannot keep, and yet I adore you anyway, like a fool who plants flowers knowing winter will come. The truth is, I would rather suffer the ache of loving you in the passing moment than live a lifetime padded with nothing.

Sometimes I press my ear to your back and listen to the steady thrum that argues with fear and wins. Your heart keeps its own brave time, a drummer that refuses to surrender the tempo. In those beats, I hear vows we never said out loud because some promises are bigger than language. We keep showing up. We keep reaching across the dark. We keep being found and finding.

If I could bottle this hour, I would not sell it. I would not even label it. I would hide it like a treasure only we know how to open. A small blue bottle of you breathing and me learning, again, that love is not a performance but a practice, not a prize but a shelter we keep mending. If I could not hide it, I would teach the world how to hold it without breaking it, how to listen without needing to fix.

I trace the map of your knuckles with my thumb, and it feels like studying the history of us. Here is where we carried too much. Here is where we let go. Here is where we built something with our bare hands because nothing handed to us fit. Your skin under my skin is a lesson in belonging I had given up on long ago. You are the proof that my hope was not ridiculous, only patient.

There are moments when I am scared of how much this matters. Loving you has made everything feel more alive, which means everything feels more at risk. It would be easier to pretend I am above it, to pretend I am a stone, to pretend I do not notice that I am finally happy. But then your hand reaches for me in your sleep, like a prayer you do not know you are praying, and I remember that courage is not loud. Courage is saying yes every time the dark asks if we are still here.

We are still here. Even on the days we fail each other, even on the evenings our voices fray, even when the dishes pile up and the patience runs low and the old ghosts try to move back in with their boxes full of doubt. We shut off the lights, climb into the same small bed, and somewhere between the last sigh and the first dream, your hand finds mine. The truest things in my life are small like that.

I think of all the people who go to sleep with their backs turned to the person they love, how often armor is worn where the skin aches for contact, how often pride wins a battle and loses a home. We have done that, too. We have turned away. But we always remember how to turn back. We let the night be wiser than our stubbornness. We let our bodies be smarter than our bruised egos. We let a touch apologize when words are too clumsy to do it right.

If I could thank every version of you, I would start with the one who shows up tired and still reaches. The one who is overwhelmed and still listens. The one who is afraid and still tries. The world will not give you a trophy for that, but I will give you my whole heart, because that is the quiet heroism that keeps love alive. Your sleepy hand, fumbling for me in the dark, is a medal I carry on the inside.

I want you to know that when I hold your fingers, I am holding tomorrow, too. I am holding all the breakfasts we will burn and laugh about, all the road trips where we get lost and end up finding a better view, all the illnesses we will wait out with soup and stubbornness, all the holidays that will be messy and real. I am holding the ordinary heaven of staying, and I am not letting go.

And if the worst thing happens, if time is unkind, if the years ask us to say goodbye earlier than we planned, remember this: we loved like people who knew the clock was running and chose to dance anyway. We did not hoard our tenderness. We spent it. We did not hoard our courage. We spent that, too. We reached for each other in our sleep, and that is the kind of truth that does not die when breath does.

Tonight, like every night, I will lie here and listen to you breathe. I will let the sound teach me how to be gentle. I will let the darkness teach me how to be brave. And when your hand searches for me, I will be there, not because I am perfect, but because love is the art of returning. You find me as if it is the most natural thing you have ever done, and I stay as if it is the most natural thing I have ever been. This is our quiet miracle. This is the way home.