"There's a tenderness in the way she holds
her sorrow like a worn photograph.
A soft bruise of her gaze that wraps around
my own scattered shards of shared sorrows.

Her smile doesn't promise to mend
the fractures of my heart. It simply
whispers, 'Me too,' and in that moment,
our loneliness is a shared sacrament.

In her eyes, I see the echoes of my own pain,
a reflected sorrow that makes the room
less empty, the shadows less oppressive.

And that's why, when you asked me what love is,
I thought of her, and the way she holds her sorrow.
It's not a balm that heals all wounds,
but a gentle acknowledgment that we're wounded together."