the intimacy of "how did you know that"

because i know you. still you. always you.

there’s an intimacy in “how did you know that?” that no grand declaration can touch. a kind of love that lives in the smallest, most ordinary gestures. so quiet they slip beneath language. unnoticed by anyone outside the moment. it’s not performative. it’s not loud.

it breathes in the noticing. the remembering. the reverence of presence. it’s not just that i made your favorite dish. it’s that i remembered how you like it. that once, without emphasis, you said you like your dal thicker, like your mother makes it. that too much garlic unsettles your stomach. that you prefer steamed rice, not jeera. so i soaked the lentils longer. watched three videos to get the texture right. added ghee, even though i never do. i don’t tell you any of this. i just serve it hot. and i wait.

i watch your face. the way your shoulders drop on the first bite. i wonder if you can taste the hour i spent stirring you into it. the song that played in the background. the way i thought of your laugh when the cumin sputtered. the sting of the onions. the steam fogging my glasses. you say, “it’s perfect.” and that’s enough.

that dairy-free cake? i had no clue where to begin. but i remembered. you can’t have milk. and i didn’t want you sitting at the table feeling left out. so i taught myself. oat milk. almond flour. a quiet prayer it wouldn’t collapse. the batter smelled strange — nutty, unfamiliar. like a new kind of home rising in the oven. and as it baked, i remembered my grandmother’s kitchen. her coconut cake. the sweet, heavy scent that clung to my hair. how i used to steal the edges before anyone noticed. and i wondered, will you remember this? the scent, the trying. and know it came from love. not ease. not habit. but chosen tenderness.

that candy wasn’t just candy. it was the one you mentioned at a red light, six months ago — “i used to love this as a kid.” and i found it. tucked behind a forgotten bakery, wrappers faded like they’d been waiting. it was raining. the man behind the counter looked surprised. i bought three. opened one as i left. it tasted like childhood — artificial strawberry, too sweet. but in that moment, time folded in on itself. i wasn’t holding candy. i was holding a memory of you no one else remembered. because i listened. because i cared enough to go looking.

real love lives there. not in the declarations. but in the daily archaeology of someone’s soul. in the small things that whisper, i see you. i learn you. you matter enough to remember.

people talk about being loved like it’s a moment — the kiss, the staying. but being known? that’s a thousand small moments. it’s “you always do this when you’re nervous.” it’s “you order green tea when you’re hopeful, black when you’re hurting.” it’s not grand. it’s not cinematic. it’s miraculous in its mundanity.

love lives in the quiet study of someone. in the daily, deliberate act of memorizing them. being known is being held in the softest way. without spectacle. without condition. when someone says, “how did you know that?” and you answer, “because i love you,” there’s no need for more.

but we don’t talk enough about the ache of being unknown. not just loneliness, but the kind that makes you question if you were ever really seen at all. the ache of building a private museum of love, full of offerings no one ever notices. i changed this for you. i remembered this, even when you forgot. and they never ask. never look close enough to see it. so your love starts living underground. like an extra heartbeat. like a bruise only you can feel.

we become caretakers of tenderness with nowhere to place it. it doesn’t vanish. it doesn’t make the love less true. just quieter. more tired. it stays in the message you don’t send. in the way you trace their name but don’t say it. in the ache that hums when you swallow the urge to reach out, again and again.

i remember being a child and knowing, instinctively, that i didn’t quite belong. not in a tragic way. just quietly. like my soul had been shelved in the wrong room. the other kids glided. i hovered. i noticed how shadows bent on the playground. how the sky smelled before rain. i felt things too deeply. asked too many questions. i was too much. so i disappeared. into stories. invisible friends. imagined worlds where softness wasn’t dangerous.

even now, when someone stays, i flinch. brace for the end. hold myself back. because love has always felt temporary. something to prepare grief for. and when people ask if i want children, i hesitate. not because i don’t want to love them, but because i remember how it felt to grow up feeling like too much. and i’m scared i won’t know how to protect their tenderness. their strangeness. their light. sometimes, late at night, i imagine being the kind of parent who says i see you in the language of packed lunches. patient pauses. remembered cloud shapes. maybe then they won’t have to build their museums in the dark. maybe they won’t have to ghost themselves just to survive being real.

because to be known is to be naked in the soul. to hand someone the map of your scars and pray they won’t use it to wound you. it’s terrifying. it’s holy. and when someone looks at your crooked edges, your barely-healed wounds, and says, i’m not going anywhere — god. it undoes you.

maybe that’s why the quiet things matter most. because sometimes, i love you sounds like text me when you get home. like i brought you the biscuit you like. like i remembered. it’s the tea before you ask. the hand on your back. the note you didn’t expect. presence, unearned. unwavering.

real love isn’t ease. it’s the courage to be altered by someone else’s chaos. to make space for their mess. their lateness. their need. i want to be altered by you. not as sacrifice, but as communion. to wait in the rain because you forgot your umbrella. to shift my day around your breath. to hold your dreams like they’re my own.

i don’t want a shadow. i want someone who reroutes my path. who moves the furniture inside me. who shifts the air. the kind of love that makes space messy — not destructive, just real. love lives in the rescheduled dinners. in the toothbrush beside yours. in the silence you don’t need to fill. in the soft, unnoticed things you carry for each other, without being asked. not because it’s easy. but because it’s you.

i don’t want perfect. i want present. not polished gestures, but the clumsy, holy act of showing up. of choosing each other, not just when it’s simple, especially when it’s not. because that’s where love earns its name. in the inconvenience. the friction. the bend.

maybe that’s all we’re asking for. not fireworks. not spectacle. just to be chosen. again and again. through the silence. through the forgetting. through the days we’re hard to hold. to be looked at in our mess, in our ordinary, and still hear: still you. always you.

love, the kind that ruins you for anything less, doesn’t knock loudly. it slips through the cracks. it remembers how you take your tea. it shows up with quiet hands and steady breath, asking nothing. promising everything. and being loved like that — not for who you could be, but for who you already are, trembling and trying — that’s what we mean when we say home.

buy me a coffee