Every Page That I Wrote, You Were On It

I’ve sat with this blank page for hours, not because I don’t know what to say, but because there’s too much to fit into a single letter. Every word I write is already stained with your name. Every sentence, a soft echo of your laughter. Every paragraph, a memory folded carefully in the corners of my heart. You’ve been the quiet whisper behind every story I’ve ever told — not always loud, but always there.

There are people who walk into our lives like a breeze — gentle, unnoticed, and gone before the curtain even moves. But you — you arrived like the season I didn’t know I’d been waiting for. Steady, certain, inevitable. There was no thunder in our beginning. No fireworks or grand declarations. Just a feeling. A knowing. Like my soul had finally found its language in you.

I don’t think I knew, back then, what it meant to belong. But now I do. And yet, we’ve spent most of our time apart.

Distance is cruel. It stretches love until it aches. It turns timezones into taunts and phone screens into lifelines. But if love were only about nearness, then we would’ve broken long ago. What we have — what we are — exists beyond geography. We built something no miles could undo.

I’ve carried you with me in silence — through quiet mornings and sleepless nights, in every unfinished poem and every whispered prayer. There were days I missed you so loudly, it drowned out everything else. And still, your presence never left. You were here — in the way I softened, in the way I stayed kind, in the way I never gave up.

You were the reason.
You still are.

I think of you often when I write — not always in conscious ways, but you’re there, in the rhythm of my sentences. In the way I let silence stretch between words, trusting that meaning will fill the gaps. That’s something you taught me: the comfort of quiet. The way two people can exist side by side, oceans apart, and still be wrapped in the same warmth.

You never demanded the spotlight in my life — you just stayed. Patient. Consistent. The kind of presence that doesn’t clamor to be seen, but becomes impossible to live without. I didn’t fall for you in a moment. I fell slowly. Layer by layer. Every time you listened. Every time you remembered the small things I didn’t know I’d said. Every time you made me feel less alone in a world that moves too fast for people like me.

Some people chase love like it’s lightning — a flash, a thrill, something to be caught before it disappears. But you… you are the firelight. Constant. Gentle. Warm. You don’t need to spark and burn to be extraordinary. You just are.

And when the world forgets how to be kind, I remember the way you speak to me — even when you’re tired, even when your own heart is heavy. There’s a softness in you that makes me believe again. In goodness. In devotion. In the kind of love that holds space rather than demands it.

Do you know what it’s like to be known? To have someone look at the darkest corners of you and not flinch? That’s what you’ve done for me, Nkem. You’ve loved me in the in-between places — in the unspoken, the unfinished, the unsure. And that’s the kind of love that stays.

I never thought I’d find someone who’d understand both my silence and my chaos. But then, there you were. My best friend. My quiet anchor. My mirror. My muse.

You don’t just inspire my words.
You live inside them.

Sometimes I wonder if you know how deeply you live in me.
Not in a loud or all-consuming way — but like a heartbeat. Unnoticed, yet essential. The kind of presence that doesn’t need permission to stay, because it never had to knock to come in.

You’ve become the background hum of my world. The steady note beneath the noise. When things fall apart, it’s your voice I hear in my mind — the one that tells me to breathe, to try again, to come home to myself. And in doing so, I come home to you.

I remember once telling you I was tired of being strong all the time. That sometimes, I just wanted to be held — even if only in words. You didn’t give me advice. You didn’t try to fix it. You just stayed.
And that was everything.

You don’t save me, Nkem. You see me.
That’s rarer.
That’s love.

There’s a kind of magic in knowing someone so completely, and still choosing them, over and over again — not just on the days when they shine, but especially when they don’t. And you… you’ve chosen me in the dimmest corners. You’ve held space for my unraveling and never once asked me to be smaller so that I’d be easier to love.

I want to tell the world about you.
Not in a grand, romantic way — but in the way poets talk about rain. Quiet. Necessary. Nourishing.
You are not loud in your love, but you are certain. And that certainty has become the ground I stand on.

I used to think I had to be alone to protect the most fragile parts of myself. But you never asked me to put down my walls — you just stayed long enough for me to open the door. You waited with kindness. With patience. With the kind of understanding that feels like grace.

There are pieces of me that only exist because you believed in them first.
The way I love now — fully, without apology — is because you made it safe to do so.

There are moments when I wake up and forget where I am.
Not because I’m lost, but because I’m remembering how it feels to be near you.
There’s a version of peace that only exists when you’re close — when your voice isn’t coming through a phone, when I can reach for you and not find air.

But even in absence, you’re present.
You’ve taught me that closeness isn’t always physical. Sometimes, it’s spiritual. Emotional. A thread running silently between two people who choose each other, even when life doesn’t make it easy.

Loving you across miles has not been effortless.
But it’s been worth it.
Every time.

People often speak of love as though it must always be convenient — that anything requiring waiting or distance somehow lacks strength. But I have never felt stronger than I do with you. You’ve been my calm in chaos, my constant in change, my softness when the world has been hard.

And there is something sacred about that.
About loving someone who is far, and yet always near.
Someone who has made a home out of their words, so you never have to feel homeless in your own heart.

You’re in the quietest parts of my day.
In the pause before I speak.
In the way I smile at my screen.
In the way I reach for comfort and find your name.

Nkem, do you know how many times I’ve written something and imagined your eyes reading it?
Do you know how often I’ve said things in the way you’d understand them best — not because I was writing to you, but because in many ways, I’m always writing for you?

You are the standard.
The measure.
The muse.

And even when I’ve felt empty, I’ve looked at the blank page and thought —
"If I just write what I feel for him, something beautiful will come of it."
And it always has.

Sometimes I catch myself replaying old conversations.
Not the dramatic ones. Not the declarations.
Just the soft ones — the “Did you eat today?”
The “Tell me what’s on your mind.”
The “I’ll stay on the call, even if you fall asleep.”

Those are the ones that haunt me in the best way.
They remind me that love is not built in grand gestures.
It’s built in small, consistent ones.

You’ve never needed to shout your love.
You showed it — in the steadiness of your voice when mine was trembling,
in the way you remembered what I forgot to say out loud.
In how you never made me feel like I was too much, even when I couldn’t hold myself together.

There were nights I cried quietly, not wanting to worry you.
But somehow, you always knew.
Somehow, you always said the right thing — or nothing at all, which was sometimes even better.

I think about the version of myself I used to be before you.
Always bracing for love to disappear.
Always waiting for someone to give up when things got inconvenient.
But you stayed.

You stayed through my silence.
You stayed through my moods.
You stayed even when I questioned why you would.

And maybe that’s why I love you the way I do.
Not with fear. Not with panic.
But with the quiet confidence of someone who knows they’ve been chosen — not out of obligation, but out of truth.

You don’t just know my stories.
You know the pauses between them.
You understand the pages I never thought I’d show anyone.

And that’s what makes you irreplaceable.
That’s what makes you mine.

Sometimes, when I let myself dream, I picture us in the same room.
Not doing anything extravagant — just existing near each other.
Maybe I’m writing, and you’re humming softly to music I can barely hear.
Maybe you’re sipping tea, and I’m watching you, memorizing the curve of your smile like it’s a poem I never want to forget.

We don’t have to say much.
We’ve never needed to.
Because our connection has always lived in the quiet spaces — in the in-betweens.

Still, I imagine what it would feel like to fall asleep beside you, not to a screen or a voice fading through signal gaps, but to your breath, steady and real and here.
To wake up and see you before the world begins — before anything else has a chance to pull us away from each other.

And yet, even now, even across this stretch of sky and time and longing —
you feel like home.
You’ve always felt like home.

I know what love feels like because of the way you’ve held me when you couldn’t touch me.
Because of the way you’ve stood beside me without needing to stand next to me.
Because of the way your love doesn’t take — it gives.
It shelters.
It builds.

You’ve given me a love that doesn’t try to change me, or complete me, or fix me.
You’ve simply held the space for me to become more of who I already am.
And in that freedom, I bloomed.

There are parts of me I wouldn’t have met if not for you.
You’ve shown me how soft strength can be.
How safe it is to be seen.
How it’s okay — more than okay — to need someone.
To be held in words, in attention, in patience.

And when the world has asked me to rush, you’ve given me time.
When it told me to perform, you reminded me I was enough.
When I felt invisible, you looked at me — really looked — and said, “I see you.”
And you did.
You always do.

Even when I tried to hide — behind my work, behind my silence, behind that stubborn need to carry the weight alone — you didn’t push. You waited. You reached gently, with open hands, not demands. And in that softness, I let go. I let you see the mess, the ache, the questions I had buried so deep I forgot they existed. And you didn’t flinch. You stayed.

Nkem, if love had a shape, it would look like everything you’ve given me. A love that breathes, not chokes. A love that listens before it speaks. That watches closely, not to judge, but to understand. A love that doesn’t perform. It simply is.

You’ve made poetry out of ordinary days. Turned quiet check-ins into symphonies. Taught me that love isn’t just about passion or grand romance — it’s in the showing up. The remembering. The patience. The peace. You’ve rewritten what I thought I knew about love, and now, nothing less will ever be enough.

I don’t know what tomorrow looks like — life is unpredictable that way — but I know that if the future is kind, it will lead me back to you. And if it isn’t, then I’ll still carry you like this: in every word, in every prayer, in every breath that asks for something real.

Because that’s what you are to me. Real. Steady. Sacred.

And if one day, years from now, someone asks me if I ever truly loved — if I ever knew what it meant to feel safe in someone else’s presence — I’ll tell them about you.

I’ll tell them about a man who loved quietly, deeply, patiently. Who showed me what it means to be known. Who became my favorite story.

And maybe they won’t understand why I smile through the ache when I speak your name. But I will.

Because even if we never share the same room, even if life pulls us into different orbits, even if this letter becomes just another folded piece of my past — you will always be the love that made everything else make sense.

Always.

With all of me,

Neta.