love poetry

Written Before We Met

Angel BoucherLeave a comment

I thought I chose you.

I thought there had been a moment
when I stood at some invisible threshold
and decided to step toward you,
as though love had simply placed two roads before me
and I, with full possession of my heart,
had chosen yours.

I thought it was my courage
that closed the distance,
my curiosity that kept me there,
my willingness to risk everything familiar
for something I could not explain.

But the longer I carry you,
the less I believe
the choice was ever mine.

Because you did not feel discovered.

You felt remembered.

There was something ancient in the recognition,
something almost sacred in the ease.
As if some forgotten part of me
had been waiting through years, through lives,
through every wrong turn and almost-love
for the precise frequency of you.

Maybe fate does not arrive dramatically.

Maybe there are no constellations rearranging,
no thunder splitting open the sky.

Maybe it looks like an ordinary conversation
that inexplicably feels like coming home.

Maybe the universe works quietly,
moving people across cities,
through heartbreaks,
through endings they once thought would destroy them,
placing one decision after another
until two separate lives
finally occupy the same room.

And then it lets us believe
we did it ourselves.

I thought I chose your voice,
your laughter,
the way your mind wandered into places mine already knew.

I thought I chose the comfort of your presence,
the inexplicable stillness
that settled inside me when you were near.

But perhaps my soul recognized yours
before my mind had language for it.

Perhaps every instinct that pulled me closer
was not recklessness at all,
but remembrance.

A thread tightening.

A compass correcting.

Something invisible whispering,
There.
That one.
You have been looking for that one.

And maybe that is why loving you frightened me.

Because choice has an exit.

Choice can be reconsidered,
reversed,
reasoned away.

But fate feels different.

Fate is realizing someone has entered you
so completely
that even absence cannot return you
to who you were before.

It is looking backward
and seeing how every road
seems almost suspiciously aligned.

Every heartbreak that redirected me.
Every ending that made space.
Every version of myself I had to outgrow
before I could recognize you.

What if none of it was random?

What if I had to become exactly this woman
to meet exactly this version of you?

What if we had passed each other sooner
and never noticed?

What if timing was the final architect,
patiently building separate lives
until our souls were ready
to recognize what our eyes had not yet seen?

I used to think love was something we found.

Now I wonder if some love
finds us.

If it waits beneath circumstance,
beneath logic,
beneath every careful plan we make,
until the universe grows tired
of watching us miss each other.

And then suddenly,

there you are.

Familiar without history.
Safe without explanation.
A stranger my heart somehow knows by name.

So perhaps I did choose you.

Perhaps fate brought me to the door
but still left my hand upon the handle.

Perhaps the universe can introduce two souls
without forcing them to stay.

And maybe that is what makes it even more beautiful:

that destiny may have written the meeting,
but I still opened the door.

I still stepped closer.

I still looked at you
with every reason to be afraid
and said yes.

So if there was ever a choice,
it was not whether my soul would recognize yours.

That had already happened.

The choice was whether I would trust it.

And I did.

I chose the person
the universe had been quietly
leading me toward
all along.

Old Fashioned

Angel BoucherLeave a comment

You were an Old Fashioned kind of love,
amber and incandescent, dangerous enough
to make restraint feel almost obsolete,
all bourbon heat beneath deceptive sweet.

A little sugar softened what the bitters knew,
a curl of orange brightened every shade of you.
I tasted warmth and mistook it for grace,
never knowing how long you would remain in taste.

I fell too fast.

Not slowly, not with care,
but like bourbon catching fire in air.
One moment steady, guarded, whole,
the next you were everywhere inside my soul.

You made intoxication feel like peace,
made all my careful inhibitions cease.
I drank you in before I understood
that something could be ruinous
and still taste good.

And then you were gone.

No gentle fading.
No final pour.
Just the glass ripped suddenly from my hand
while I was still reaching for more.

That was the cruelty of it.

I had not finished loving you.

There was still warmth in the glass,
still sweetness at the bottom,
still futures suspended in amber
I had not yet learned were impossible.

Endings do not always wait
for the heart to consent.

Sometimes they arrive without ceremony,
and leave the living
to negotiate with what remains.

So now I carry you like whiskey heat,
something vanished from the tongue
but lingering underneath.

A ghost of citrus.
Bitters on the breath.
Residual warmth
that somehow survived its death.

Time has diluted some of the pain,
but dilution is not erasure all the same.
One song, one street, one familiar light,
and suddenly I am drinking from that night.

The glass fills again.

The burn returns.

Memory has a merciless way
of resurrecting what the body once learned.

Maybe that is what disastrous love becomes:

a distillation.

The sweetness evaporates first.
What remains is concentrated ache,
the strongest notes preserved
after everything else has burned away.

And I know better now.

I know sugar can disguise severity.
I know warmth can imitate security.
I know the beautiful burn can still destroy
the very thing it once made feel like joy.

But if someone asked me what you were,
I would still answer without hesitation:

strong,
sweet,
bitter,
brief.

A beautiful intoxication
with a brutal finish.

The kind of love
you swallow once,

feel burning all the way down,

and spend the rest of your life
tasting
in the empty glass.

The Love She Deserves

Angel BoucherLeave a comment

She deserves a love that does not make her guess,
a love that speaks in effort, warmth, and tenderness.
Not something hidden, hesitant, or halfway shown,
but something steady enough to make her feel known.

She deserves the date already planned,
the thought behind the place, the reaching for her hand.
The message in the middle of an ordinary day,
sent for no reason except to make her smile that way.

She deserves reassurance without having to plead,
love notes tucked quietly where she might read.
A song sent because one lyric sounded like her name,
a small surprise that says, I thought of you today.

She deserves the little things.

The coffee remembered exactly right.
The forehead kiss before goodnight.
The story she told weeks ago brought up again,
proof that her words did not disappear back then.

She deserves someone who listens deeply enough
to remember what she loves and what she finds tough.
Someone who notices when her energy shifts,
who understands affection is built from ordinary gifts.

She deserves to be held on the beautiful days,
when laughter comes easily and sunlight stays,
and held even tighter when the world turns gray,
when she has nothing charming or easy to say.

She deserves quality time that feels deliberate,
not squeezed into whatever moments happen to fit.
Someone who makes room because seeing her matters,
who does not offer scraps from a schedule in tatters.

She deserves effort she never has to decode,
someone willing to travel the inconvenient road.
To choose the longer drive, rearrange the day,
because wanting time with her should show in some way.

She deserves to be celebrated, not concealed,
to know affection is something openly revealed.
To be spoken of proudly, held close in the light,
not treated like something that only exists out of sight.

She deserves spontaneous laughter, ridiculous plans,
songs in the car and interlocking hands.
A thousand tiny moments no one else would see,
the quiet architecture of intimacy.

She deserves someone protective of her heart,
not possessive, not controlling, not tearing it apart.
Someone who guards the trust she places inside,
who makes her feel safest standing at his side.

Someone who understands that love is not grand
only when there are flowers or diamonds in hand.
Love is remembering.
Love is showing up.
Love is noticing when her world has become too much.

Love is a thousand intentional things
that never require an audience or diamond rings.
It is consistency whispered through every day,
You matter to me. I am not going away.

Because she will love like an ocean given the shore,
with depth no shallow heart could ever ignore.
She will remember your wounds, your fears, your dreams,
and love every complicated space in between.

She will make room for your silence and celebrate your voice,
stand beside you in struggle and honor your choice.
She will give loyalty, tenderness, passion, and trust,
not because she is naive, but because loving deeply is just
the way her heart was built.

So she should never apologize
for wanting love she can actually recognize.

She deserves someone who tries.
Someone who stays.
Someone who chooses her in tangible ways.

Someone who does not merely say, You are mine,
but proves, through ordinary moments and time:

I see you.
I know you.
I thought of you today.

And most of all,

I will handle your heart
with the same care
you give mine.