To the One Who Asked About Love

A letter I didn’t know I needed to write.

You asked me
why I question lightning.

And I didn’t know how to answer
without unraveling.

I told you I’ve known
the 3AM kind—
the kind that burns
like worship
and withdrawal
at the same time.

I’ve known love
like a drug,
a high so dizzying
I forgot my own name
just to taste it again.

I’ve known the kind
that leaves teeth marks on memory,
that lives in the back of my throat,
in the pauses between songs
I can’t listen to anymore.

But you,
you spoke of love
as something still.
A presence,
not a pursuit.
A being,
not a bargain.

And I didn’t know what to say to that.
Because I have never loved
without gripping.
Without proving.
Without performing.

You said—
“just let it be an experience.”
Love,
in its purest form.
Not romance.
Not ache.
Not need dressed up in longing.

And I heard you.
I did.

But here’s the part
I didn’t say:

The absence of love—
or what I thought was love—
is frighteningly silent
and deafening
at the same time.

It’s withdrawal.
It’s walking through your own body
like an empty house
waiting for a knock
that may never come.

But maybe…
maybe that silence
is the place love lives
when it’s not screaming
for attention.

Maybe that’s where
the real kind waits.
The soft kind.
The kind that stays
without needing
a reason.

So yes—
I’m falling in love
with myself.
Slowly.
Without fireworks.
Without addiction.
Without needing to be rescued.

Maybe lightning does strike twice.
Or maybe it just learns
to come quietly
the second time.

But I’m listening now.
Not for thunder—
but for truth.

With Grace & Ink,

Mai