— for everyone who loved through the static

In between lockdowns and second-guessing every cough, something strange happened. We learned to love differently. Not the grand, cinematic kind — no airport dashes or rain-soaked confessions. But love in the margins. Love as survival.

And yet.

And maybe that’s what I’ll remember most. Not the fear. Not the news tickers or the graphs climbing toward tragedy. But the way we held each other at the edge of uncertainty, and decided it was still worth it.

I laughed because I thought he was joking. He wasn’t.

Love at the end of the world isn’t perfect. It’s messy, tired, anxious, beautiful. It forgets to do the dishes. It cries in the bathroom. It makes dark jokes and holds on too tight.

That was the thing about 2021. We stopped saving love for later. Later felt like a lie. So we loved in grocery store parking lots, through masks and bad Wi-Fi, in arguments about vaccine appointments and who left the window open.