Fawnlight & Footnotes

I never expected to want a life loud enough to hold me, because I was raised inside of a quiet that seemed determined to swallow every sound I made, a quiet that taught me to walk softly, love cautiously, and shrink myself into something almost unnoticeable. By the time I learned how to speak, my voice already carried the shape of apology, as if I’d trespassed simply by existing. I thought that was what I was meant for: being small, being careful, being a ghost in rooms where everyone else lived loudly.

And then you appeared – not with a noise or spectacle, but with a kind of effortless presence, like a melody drifting in through a half-open window, so natural and familiar I couldn’t tell whether I’d been waiting for it or simply missing it without knowing. You stepped into my orbit with such gentle gravity that I didn’t realise at first how steadily you were pulling me back into my own body, how quietly you were convincing me that maybe I wasn’t meant for silence after all.

You remind me of the type of storm people run outside to meet, the wild summer kind that drenches the whole world in seconds but somehow makes everything feel new, charged, shimmering. You’re thunder that shakes the walls without threatening them, lightning that illuminates the things I’ve tried hardest to bury, rain that doesn’t drown as much as it frees. There’s a kind of Holy chaos in the way your presence shifts the air around me – not destructive or dangerous, just alive in a way I’ve never learned to trust but find myself wanting anyway.

With you, the ordinary becomes something worth noticing. A chipped mug feels like an heirloom. A cluttered kitchen feels like a sanctuary. The softness of your laugh feels like it could warm an entire season. When we brush past each other in tight spaces, there is something reverent in the way we barely touch – as if even gravity is conspiring to draw us closer. Nothing about it is grand or cinematic, yet it feels sacred in a way I struggle to name.

I imagine futures now, small ones feel more like truth than fantasy; a tiny apartment with thin walls and a stubbornly squeaky floorboard, mismatched blankets piled on the couch, records spinning on a player that skips on the songs we love most. I picture mornings where sunlight spills across your shoulders while I burn breakfast, and evenings where we fall asleep mid-conversation, tangled in warmth and half-heard promises. I imagine a life that doesn’t need to be perfect to feel like home, a life where the chaos is gentle and the devotion unshakable.

Of course, part of me still flinches at softness. I’ve known versions of love that asked me to make myself smaller, quieter, easier to handle. I’ve known affection that came with terms and warnings, and I learned early how to mistake volatility for passion, abandonment for inevitability. I have wounds shaped like doorways people walked out of, lessons carved from the sharp edges of being left behind. And even now, even with you, I sometimes brace for storms that never arrive.

But you don’t move like danger. You approach like someone who doesn’t know that love can wound, or maybe like someone who does know but refuses to wield it. You touch the bruised places inside of me with a tenderness so instinctive it feels rebellious, like you’re rewriting history simply by refusing to repeat it.

Something in me exhales when I’m near you, an ancient tension loosening as if it’s finally being allowed to rest. My edges don’t feel like threats. My past doesn’t feel like prophecy. You shift the future from something I brace for into something I lean toward, cautiously at first, then with a kind of reckless willingness that surprises even me.

You don’t fix me – not that I would ever let anyone try – but you make me want to like in the world that holds you. You remind me that tenderness can be fierce, that chaos can be kind, that devotion can exist without demanding blood in return.

So here is my truth, unbroken and unashamed. If love is a song, you are the chord progression that rewrote my heartbeat. If life is a gamble, you are the hand I would gladly put everything on. If the future is a house, you are the warm light seeping beneath the door, promising safety long before I step inside.

Call it madness. Call it fate. Call it whatever feels less terrifying than admitting how deeply I feel this.

But know this, you are the Holy chaos that steadies me, the miracle I never thought would find me, the warmth I didn’t dare believe I deserved, and the life I want – not perfectly, not carefully, but fully.

Loving you feels, for the first time, like something I don’t have to brace myself against.