I love that my relationship is becoming more romantic every day.

Romance in a long relationship gets quietly demoted by logistics. The evening fills up with who is collecting whom and whether the form was submitted, and then it is ten past eleven.

The recovery is rarely a weekend away. It is smaller and more deliberate: a candle on a Tuesday for no reason, dinner at the table instead of in front of something, the good glasses used on a night with nothing to celebrate.

The point isn't the gesture. It is the signal that this evening was chosen rather than defaulted into.