Originally posted on Facebook on Saturday, June 27, 2026.

Yesterday, during six hours of rough riding in a U-Haul, Melissa and I enjoyed the great love ballads of 90s R&B.

There, love was painted in beautiful and vivid feelings;

like a spring breeze,
a summer rain,
the gentle lapping of waves,
or walking, holding hands under the changing leaves of fall.

Listening, I realized our reality was not like the love in those songs;
love that I grew up so wanting;
love as a thread of euphoria that ran through everything, where a break in that thread means the love is gone or never was.

Our love is not that; some high to be maintained.

Our love is a threefold cord that holds
through embraces, distance, changes, betrayal, cuddles, loneliness, depression, arousal, and folding clothes; it's a through-line that carries it all.

The love of the songs is measured in feeling.

The love of our life just is.

After
the breeze wanes,
the water is still,
and the trees are bare,
this love remains.

Our love is the canvas we share,
not the flat page of a perfect moment,
but the quiet, durable consistency of a shared hope that shapes everything.
Like a rough ride, painful even in parts, that I'd do all over again,
a reality carrying more beauty than any love song ever made.