In the moments between is when I know I love her

The fraction of a second before she looks up again when her gaze softens and her brow unfurls as the artwork enveloping her soul releases her back into the world and reality fades gently into her periphery

In the moments when she’s singing along and the music finds the breaking point where she lets her voice fall silent and leans into its embrace before joining back in as if to preserve the feeling of the notes like a pressed leaf that was too pure to be piled with the rest and jumped into with careless abandon

In the pause when our lips part and she breathes me in savoring the moment
stirring the hopes and dreams of my younger self back into a frenzy without so much as a word

In this moment
in the break of our nightly conversation to be whisked away to help her family as she often does I find my love only grows as again and again her generosity with her time is out on display and I take my place in the court side seats I so proudly occupy and I silently cheer her on.

And in the long days between our last kiss and our first embrace
like soldiers come home from the battlefield her moonlight skin greets me each time like the arms of long lost love
She melts beneath my touch and all the in betweens culminate and I call it love