As you lay there next to me, mostly darkness but the twinkling stars above us, I looked in your eyes and found the innocent soul you'd bared and given me the privilege of knowing. I looked in your eyes and I found the door to the next part of my life. I fell through the layers of life in them and I swear I could see the second I fell in love with you. I wondered how such a small thing on your face could hold so much. I didn't look at your lips but I knew you were smiling. I felt your hand on my cheek and then I saw relief in your eyes.
As you lay there next to me, mostly darkness but the twinkling stars above us, I looked in your eyes and I wondered how there could be any evil in the world when something as pure as this existed.
In that moment, I could do nothing else but fall deeper in love with you and drown in the flood of emotions that were unlocked by just one look at you. Suddenly all there was in the world was just you. I had no choice but to fall for you.
I loved you when you told me to be careful and call you when I was home, I loved you when you cried in my shoulder about your parents, I loved you when you told me your darkest secrets, I loved you when you said you'd love me forever. I had no choice because you made my heart go faster than anyone else, and you made me smile for no reason and I had no choice because who could say no to your eyes?
Now, twenty years later I know that I love you because I chose to.
Now, twenty years later, as you keep your bag on that chair next to our bed where it shouldn't be, leave your shoes on the rug, you ask me for your coffee completely disgruntled and don't notice when I ask you about your day. I chose to love you in that moment too.
Your eyes are foreign, but they still hold on to their old self with a tiny string called hope, which bears my weight too. As I bring you your coffee and you complain about the sugar but drink it anyway, you tell me how terribly your boss treated you. Still, you hug me and tell me how much you love me and you tell me how you wouldn't know what to do without me. You run your hands through my hair and lay me down and in that moment I sigh and tell you I love you too.
I remembered that I loved you every moment of those twenty years and I knew that I loved you not because I didn't have a choice but because I did.
I chose to love you when you told me to go away, instead I held you close because I knew you were breaking apart, I chose to love you when we saw the two teenagers walking down the road, so in love, and I almost cried at what we used to be, I chose to love you when I wanted to run away because it was just so fucking hard and because it's not supposed to be, I chose to love you when I wanted nothing to do with you because you just pissed me off so much day after day, I chose to love you when we wanted to just end the whole the damn thing but we didn't because that's not what we promised each other twenty years ago and damn all those people to hell who say that when something breaks you throw it away because as long as we choose to love each other this will never break.