I said I love you. It wasn’t a confession, nor a vow. Those words are acceptance, a check clearing. All the boxes ticked. A little nod: I see your bruises and your obsessions. What you curl around. The masks you wear. The armor you strap to yourself; the soft, tender crannies it shields. I’ve noticed the three tiny wrinkles in front of each ear—I mark them as mine. I look at them each time I rest my head on your chest, and I say Hi.

My love sees the problems you solve to earn your place, the math you do without being asked, and the thirty-year-old torn T-shirt and the out-of-style glasses. It tells you it’s okay to buy new ones, but you don’t have to—you can just be. One time, you walked me home in the rain, surprised I wanted to kiss you. Your eyes crinkled, funneling droplets and tears between my lips. Every time I’ve needed to cry in the last three decades, you’ve run to me. Soaked up every woe but never grew sodden. 

When I fill up on all your singularities, I become whole. Sated and smooth, that is my I love you.

Shelby Cohen’s Best of the Net-nominated short fiction has been published in All Worlds Wayfarer, Suburban Witchcraft, Grey Coven Publishing, and Nettle Journal. Her poetry can be found in Witches Magazine, Beneath the Garden, Rundelania, Anomaly Poetry’s 2025 Rituals, Arcana Poetry Press, Weaving the Light from Quillkeepers Press, and Altar Literary Magazine. A 25-year disabled public relations veteran writing at her kitchen table in Upstate New York, Cohen is querying her third novel now. You can find her @thebaronessshelby.

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