The Ways I Love You

Sometimes, I tell you how much I love you.
Other times, I forget and just chalk it up to being busy or distracted.
Most times, I say I love you like I’m saying hello. I love you.
When I wake up, I love you at the beginning or end of every conversation and/or phone call. While we’re making love, while we’re eating or walking or watching TV.

Each time I mean it but somehow, in the excessive way I say I love you, I worry that it might have lost its meaning somehow.

I hope it doesn’t.

I love you, the same way I fell in love with you.
In the same manner of becoming giddy when we talk, the hand holding under the lunch table, the secret kisses. I love you for the late night talks, for the concern over sleep or food intake.
I love you for the shy awkward first date – staring at each other across the table but never getting the courage to look at each other at the same time for more than 5 seconds.

I love you, in a different way too. In a way that’s both mature and immature and I hope that’s okay.

I love you like a child loves his parents or a piece of cake. (And I love cake – I love you as much as I love cake.)
I love you the way a cat loves lounging on the floor, tirelessly paws at the beam of sunlight.
I love you the way your dogs love you – excited and practically bouncing at the sight of you the moment you come home each day, every day.
I love you the way a flower loves water, and the sunlight – endlessly and being its reason for blooming.

I love you the way a teenager loves; full of insecurities about their looks – wanting everyday to look good in your eyes. Quick to react and prone to jealousy – I love you the same way a teenager first falls in love.

I love you the way a person, having gone through a tremendous heartache loves.
Each step a cautious attempt, each word carefully thought of, each decision analyzed over and over again.
Guard up, head down – I love you in my secret, wounded patchwork heart. Ready to run away at any moment’s notice but clinging to you in a silent plea. Saying don’t go and I’m sorry I always seem to push you away.

I love you, the way you have taught me how to love. With absolute trust and security.
That every second does not have to spent in each other’s arm. That every sentence does not have to end with an I love you or a I miss you. That every day is not a requirement to date, have dinner, catch a movie, make out.

I love you in the way you have shown me how to love. In hearing my words, and listening to my unspoken sentences. In the way you, having loved so achingly before knows how to love.
In the way your secret, wounded patchwork heart loves me.

I love you, because you are you. I love you because I am me, and I love you the many ways I know how and in the many ways I show it. I love you the same way I love to write. And in writing about you, and in writing for you, I am loving you into immortality. Brought to life by twenty-six letters interposed together and at varying lengths and definition, I am loving you.

And in my loving you, I thank you for loving me too.