long story shorter

I once lived on a pedestal built from from apology—
balanced like a tightrope walker
with a laugh too bright,
a pulse too wild,
a history rattled louder
than any future I could imagine.

And yes—
I fell.
Not gracefully. Not poetically.
Just straight down the rabbit hole
of all the wrong hands offered
at all the wrong times.
Long story short,
it was a bad time to be soft.

I was pushed from the precipice
more times than I can count,
and each time I clung to the nearest lips
as if proximity could be salvation,
as if heartache was a doorway
to something gentler.
But those stories always cracked—
paper spines, hollow echoes,
wrongs dressed like rights
if you squint long or hard enough.
Long story short,
it was the wrong guy,
the wrong shape of love,
the wrong place to land.

But then—
then there was you.
You,
who arrived like the quiet part of the song
right before the key change,
where everything softens
and suddenly the world knows
how to breathe again.

You took my hand
like you’d been holding it for lifetimes,
like my tremors weren’t warning signs
but invitations.
You moved through the edges of my life
with the steadiness of someone
who knows storms by their first whisper
and never flinches at thunder.

You saw the whole discography—
the manic glistening too bright,
the depressed devoured blues,
the quirked jittering by the corner
like nervous animals in need of shelter.
And
you stepped closer.
Closer still.
As if my chaos had always needed
a witness who did not run.

I didn’t know love could be this—
warm like a porch light left on,
gentle as someone stroking your hair
after a day that broke you,
steady as breath shared in the quiet
after midnight.

You made me feel
unbelievably held—
in ways no one ever tried to hold me,
in ways I didn’t even know I deserved.

You taught me that nurtured
is a verb that lives in small moments:
the way you look at me
when I lose my words,
the softness you offer
when my mind tilts into shadows,
the laughter you coax from me
like a songbird convinced
the world is safe enough to sing.

You made space for all my jaggedness
and never once asked
to make myself smaller.
You loved the pieces
I used to hide—
trembling ones,
fierce ones,
ones stitched from survival
and sleepless nights.

And now—
long story short—
I’m all about you.

You,
who turned every rabbit hole
into a soft landing.
You,
who proved the precipice
was not the end but the beginning.
You,
who met my history
my present
my future
and did not flinch,
who held my hand
like it was homecoming.

My life splits cleaning
into before you
and after.

And after
is gentler.
After
is brighter.
After
is a story I’m no longer afraid
to stay for.

I fell,
I broke,
I survived,
I found you.

Because the long story—
is ever and evermore.