Ashley Monae

Some people think love is just butterflies.

I think love is grief with a heartbeat.

It’s carrying somebody inside of you so deep

that their storms start raining in your chest too.

You learn the weight of their silence.

The difference between their tired sigh

and their “I’m trying not to fall apart” sigh.

You memorize the tension in their jaw,

the way their eyes stop focusing

when life is eating them alive.

And the hardest part?

They don’t even realize you’re hurting too.

They think they hid it well.

They think they suffered alone.

Meanwhile, you’re awake at 2AM

trying to fix wounds they never showed you directly.

That’s the cruel thing about loving hard.

You become emotionally fluent

in a language the other person doesn’t even know they’re speaking.

You start feeling responsible for saving them

from thoughts they never said out loud.

You carry their pressure in your spine.

Their sadness in your appetite.

Their stress in your sleep.

And somehow…

they still look at you

like you could never possibly understand.

But you do.

Too much in fact.

That’s the problem.

Because loving someone so deep isn’t always loud.

Sometimes it’s sitting across from them, 

smiling normal,

while your heart quietly breaks

from feeling pain that doesn’t even belong to you.

And maybe that’s why people like me become exhausted so quietly.

Because nobody notices when the strong ones start drowning.

We know how to keep conversations going

while our chest is collapsing underneath them.

We know how to love people through their darkness

without making our own darkness the headline.

So we become homes for people

who don’t even realize they’re homeless emotionally.

We pour.

And pour.

And pour.

Until one day we look at ourselves

and realize we’ve been surviving off emotional crumbs, while serving five-course meals to everybody else.

And still…

we love carefully.

Softly.

Loyally.

Because when I love someone,

I don’t just hear their words.

I hear the hurt behind the pause.

The exhaustion behind the attitude.

The fear hidden inside anger.

I notice when “I’m fine” sounds heavier than usual.

I notice when your laugh is missing life.

I notice when your touch feels distracted.

And maybe that’s my gift.

Or maybe it’s the thing that ruins me most.

Because loving someone this deep

means watching them bleed internally

while they swear they’re okay…

and feeling every cut

like the knife somehow reached you too.