The love between my partner and I grow stronger every day

Not every day adds something. Some days you're both tired and short with each other, and the thing simply holds its position, which is its own quiet achievement.

Tree rings record dry years as thin bands. The tree didn't fail those summers; it grew narrowly and kept going, and the trunk is thicker for having come through them at all. Nobody looks at a cross-section and reads the thin rings as wasted time.

Long love accumulates the same way — good stretches, dry stretches, all of it laid down in the same trunk. What's being built isn't the feeling on a given evening. It's the record of not leaving.