There comes a time in every relationship when the question is asked: Why do you love me?

You’re tongue-tied. You don’t know what to say. Everything you have in mind answers what you love about him, and not why you really love him. How do you summarize everything and nothing in the same answer? How do you tell him what it feels like to be “fallen”- in lust, in love, right into his arms?

How do you convince a man you love that it is not too good to be true? That just because he thinks you’re beautiful does not mean that he doesn’t deserve you? How do you hold his face in your hands and look into his eyes, trying to make him understand that you truly love him- and it doesn’t matter why.

And you love him with your fingers in his hair, and his breath on your forehead; you love him with his arm around your shoulder when you walk down the aisles of a second-hand bookstore; you love him with his brow knotted in the centre when he considers the orange top you’re wearing in the trial room; you love him for every shared meal when the first bite and the last bite is inconspicuously yours; you love him for every time you fall asleep talking on the phone and he stays on the line to hear you breathe. You love him! You LOVE him! Does it really matter why?

Every minute of shared time makes you a better human being- there is a world within this world, complete with its own stories, histories, people, loves, blood bonds, heart nurturers, soul carers, dreams, ambitions, desires, whispers, sighs, songs, and drama. There is glory in the shared weirdness, in the uncontrollable craziness, and tearful hysteria. And if not for your boy, not one of these things would happen in its unique heart-stopping beauty. Your world is poetry in motion, like an ancient hand painted the frames and spilled it out of heaven for everyone to see.

“I didn’t ask to love you…

It was gifted to me. I was blessed with the faith when I least expected it to arrive, when my heart was broken enough number of times and could be broken no more, when hope had left my body. I don’t love you because I need you or because you make me feel good about myself. I love you because I was meant to be a banyan tree, and you and I are a forest of everlasting legacy.

I love you because I don’t have much of a choice when all the randomness of the universe decided to put you, I, this moment, and this feeling together, over the same spine-broken volume of poetry. And there are only few things in the world that I cannot resist- like the smell of old books, and an unpretentious smile with no reservations.

But I do not love you in verse or music. I do not love you in words and rhythm. I do not love you in a language or a structure. For they were all designed to fill the void of understanding between people. But in a union such as ours, there is no emptiness to be filled, no words need to strengthen an insecure bridge from my heart to yours. I love you because of the silence. And even for one moment of silence so complete, that a universe is conceived within it.

Don’t dwell on the why. Don’t uproot our banyan tree to look for a base.”

So, when the inevitable question arrives, softly whispering through your hair as your head comfortably rests in the crook of his arm- what do you say?

“Why do you love me?” he asks, and you put on your best monkey face and say, “Who said I love you?”. And then you kiss.

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