I don’t spend my nights
asking the universe where you are.
I’ve got work in the morning,
bills with my name on them,
people who count on me,
and a life I’ve been building
with both hands.
Still…
sometimes I catch myself
looking at the empty side of the couch
like it knows something I don’t.
I wonder what your laugh sounds like
when you forget anyone is listening.
What song you play twice
before admitting it’s your favorite.
Whether you drink your coffee slowly
or abandon it somewhere in the house
and swear somebody moved it.
I wonder what will annoy me about you.
Because I don’t want perfect.
Perfect has never felt alive enough.
Give me stubborn.
Give me complicated.
Give me the woman who has survived enough
to know that love is not a rescue mission.
Come with scars you stopped hiding.
Come with dreams
that existed before my name
ever reached your mouth.
I want to meet you standing…
not waiting for me to complete you.
I’ve spent too much time
becoming a man I respect
to ask a woman to disappear inside my life.
Bring your own fire.
I’ll bring mine.
We’ll see what happens
when they recognize each other.
And when you finally arrive,
I probably won’t say
I’ve been waiting for you.
That sounds too much like
I stopped living.
I didn’t.
I traveled.
I failed.
I rebuilt.
I laughed until two in the morning.
I learned how to eat alone
without feeling lonely.
I made peace with silence.
But I kept a place for you in it.
Not an empty space.
A place.
There’s a difference.
Because somewhere between
the man I used to be
and the man I’m still becoming,
I decided that when love finds me,
I want to meet it awake.
So take your time.
Become who you need to become.
Kiss the wrong ones
if that’s part of the road.
Get lost.
Get wiser.
Change your hair.
Change cities.
Change your mind.
Just don’t shrink yourself
trying to arrive sooner.
I’m not looking for a woman
who needs me.
I’m waiting for the one
who could live perfectly well without me—
but looks across a crowded room,
sees me,
and thinks,
There you are.
And God—
I hope I get to say it first.
