This is not the love story I thought it would be when we were fifteen.

Back then, love felt like something reckless—a fearless act of outrunning time and clinging to every precious moment, afraid that what we have will vanish before I could even memorize the shape of your lips. I thought love was a fragile daydream that shatters the moment when the clock strikes midnight.

And then, there was you.

How silly, how tender, how momentary it is that you would experience love in its fleeting, fickle disguises and still choose to marry someone as antithetical as me. We went through a series of cruel summers, where the heat of the fight could have undone us. Yet you chose me, over and over again.

Love with you was not all just sparks fly, and this didn't mean it was harsh. It became something softer, like daylight breaking after the longest night. It was laughter spilling in kitchens under refrigerator lights, and long drives with the windows down as our voices crack with the songs we know all too well.

As I have come to know it with you, there will be days when our love will come in with the rain. And even then, I just know I will find myself clinging to the truth that every downpour is meant to water something so it can bloom. That even the saddest song, sung night after night, can one day be redeemed by a softer key.

At the end of the day, this love will forever and always be alive.

Because this is the best thing that’s ever been mine.

• Sean Clifford M. Malinao
• (Layout by Phoemella Jane Balderama/FEU Advocate)