A love poem by Elijah Astute

Soul Mate

Before your name, I felt the pull of you,
a tide that dragged me from the shallow shore.
I was a vessel, wandering, split in two,
with holes that let the ocean in, and more.
You found me sinking, never asked me why,
just held my head above the waterline.

You looked at me and saw not what I was,
but what I’d been before the world went dark,
a boy who still believed in Santa Claus,
a man who built his house without a spark.
And in that gaze, I felt the strangest thing,
a door that opens just as one begins.

You love me in the way you stay and break,
even after you’ve shattered me to dust.
You hate me, look at me like I’m a mistake,
like my name is something you could crush.
And I love you not despite it, but because,
your thorns feel like home, your wounds like laws.

Maybe hate is just love tired of pretending,
maybe cruelty is passion that forgot
how to speak in gentle tongues, neverending,
maybe silence is a scream that learned to swallow
itself whole, and I have learned to read
the braille of every scar you left in me.

There were nights I held your absence like a stone,
turned it over in my palms until it shone.
There were mornings I awoke to empty sheets,
called your name into the dark repeats.
I have cursed you. I have prayed for you.
I have held your memory like a rosary.

Each failure was a kind of prayer I made,
each tear a psalm I never learned to sing,
each sleepless night a hymn of wondering
if love was ever meant to feel this way,
a wound that heals but never truly seals,
a kiss that tastes of everything we miss.

You left. Or I did. Or the world tore us apart.
But somehow in the leaving, you remained,
a splinter in my chest, a stubborn beat,
a name I could not wash out of my mouth.
God knows I’ve lied. I’ve strayed. I’ve faked
loving you when I was too broken to try.

I’ve been the villain in the story you make,
and you’ve been the ghost in mine.
We traded roles like coins we couldn’t keep,
and called it love because it hurt so deep.
Yet you saw through the fake and still stayed,
or left, and still stayed, in the hollow place you made.

In the quiet hours when I cannot sleep,
in the prayers I send to gods I never trusted,
in the echo of your name that my ribs cage,
I find you still. You are for me. I am for you.
The world may not understand that math,
may see only wreckage, but they never knew

the language we speak in the aftermath,
in scars and silence, in the breath before the storm.
In the calm that comes after the breaking, we are born.
We are not a fairy tale. We are not a tragedy.
We are something older than both,
a covenant written in blood and doubt.

A promise neither of us can live without,
a love that doesn’t ask to be understood,
only to be lived. So love me in your way,
cheat me, hate me, underestimate me,
I will still be here, learning to love you truly,
for once, without faking, without hiding.

Without running from the fire we feed with fear.
‘Cause you are not my other half, you are my whole damn war,
my beautiful catastrophe, my soul mate.
And if the world should end tonight,
I’d spend my final breath on you,
not on regret, not on the fight,

but on the only thing I knew was true:
that in the wreckage of our years,
in every tear and every scar,
in all the laughter and the fears,
you were my home, my guiding star.
Not perfect. Not easy. Not kind.
But mine. And yours. For all the Time.