You gave me the faintest bit of hope that there was, even when I didn’t believe it, or know you that well. Somehow you always made things seem so balanced for me. The chaos I often feel inside is always calmed when I look at you, and I’ve always been at a loss as to explain why. I’m not sure it matters much. The very fact that it’s this way, that I can find peace and quiet within myself at your presence alone, is more than enough.

I could write for decades
without recording a word
to give any sort of justice to
the nearly invisible shifting in your intensity
when you come upon something
you’ve been waiting for, but never
quite dared to believe in.
No words exist that could make that into
something more beautiful than it is in passing,
beheld by a stranger
holding their breath so as not
to change it,
or scare it away again.

When I think of any good things in my life, you’re always the very first to come to mind. I don’t know if you realize it, but any time I spend with you is precious to me. I know that if I told you that you’d shrug it off and think that I was just humoring you, but I don’t think you understand how every second I spend in your company resonates somewhere deep in my consciousness, like a line to a poem I abandoned long before I met you. You can bring the memory of the poetry back, even if it’s only in passing.

I don’t think I’ve known a person with as much goodness in them as you have without trying. Others have has this natural goodness about them that seems ingrained. You have that, too, but it’s a completely different kind of good. You’re good despite all the shit that’s happened to you, that would have made so many others cease to be that way. I think that retaining goodness after you’ve seen your world crumble is in a completely different category than just an inherent goodness. Both count, but no matter how many ways I look at it, I can’t see the goodness in most other people lasting through anything truly devastating. That takes a heart and a conscience stronger than most ever attain; I certainly can never hope to.