Home felt even warmer when filled with memories.
You led me down the hallway, stopping beneath the gallery wall we'd never officially planned. Photos, sketches, Polaroids each captured something fragile and precious. One of us dancing in the kitchen. Another of you asleep on the couch, paint on your fingers. A sketch of me reading, unaware that you had been watching, drawing me into paper with a kind of reverence.
I traced the edges of a frame. "When did you make this one?"
You stepped beside me, arms looping around my waist. "That was the day we stayed in. The day you said nothing but held me like everything would be okay."
There were no grand titles, no labels. Just moments. Proof that love wasn't always loud or full of declarations. Sometimes it was quiet glances, half-finished cups of tea, the sound of turning pages while someone painted beside you.
"This is our forever," you whispered. "Not in marble or stone but in paper and ink. In color and quiet."
And in that hallway, surrounded by the pieces of our days, I turned to you and kissed you again. Because sometimes, the most powerful things aren't written they're remembered.