Preface
Some love is loud. This one is quiet on purpose. It lives in kettle-sounds, in the softer word you choose, in the ordinary care that keeps returning. If you’ve ever stayed when it would’ve been easier to disappear, this is for you.
Recipe for Staying
Take one small kitchen
and the kind of light that forgives.
Fill the kettle.
Wait for the first quiet boil.
Warm the cups first—
not because it matters—
but because it says: I thought of you before you arrived.
Slice bread.
Keep the knife turned away from your hand.
Salt the eggs.
Not too much.
Enough to make the day feel real.
Leave your phone face down.
Let the room have you.
Set out an extra spoon
even if you’re sure you won’t need it.
When you speak,
choose the softer word
and mean it.
When you’re wrong,
say it plainly.
No performance. No weather.
When they’re tired,
don’t ask for a better version of them.
Just make space.
Fold the laundry without keeping score.
Match the socks like it’s a small vow.
Rinse the sink.
Wipe the counter.
Put the sponge back where it belongs.
Kiss at the doorway,
once, slow,
as if you’re sealing a letter.
Serve warm.
Eat in the same room.
Repeat daily,
especially on the days
you’d rather run.
Staying is not one big moment.
It’s a hundred small moments
done with open hands.
Recap
A gentle “recipe” for devotion: the daily, unglamorous acts—warm cups, face-down phones, plain apologies, uncounted care—that turn staying into something real.
Asuka’s Room
I wrote this in the space between tasks—those tiny minutes that don’t look like romance until you realize they’re the whole thing. The way a kitchen can become a promise. The way “I thought of you” can be a warmed cup, an extra spoon, a sink left clean for tomorrow. I wanted the poem to feel like a hand on your shoulder, not a lecture—simple, steady, and doable.
If you’d like to share
If this landed softly for you, you can restack it so it can find another table to sit at, or send it to someone you’d cook a quiet morning for.
This poem understands love the way real life does, quietly. Not in grand gestures, but in warmed cups, softer words, and the choice to stay when leaving would be easier. It feels less like a poem and more like a hand on the shoulder, reminding us that devotion is built from small, honest repetitions.
And I’ll admit, if I don’t put a few things back properly in the kitchen, I stay partly out of love… and partly out of fear of my wife’s rolling pin, the most powerful weapon in the kitchen.😅
This poem feels like someone placing a warm hand on your back before you even notice you needed it.
It understands that love is made of tiny mercies, the kind you only see when you slow down enough to feel them.
Every gesture is a quiet way of saying “I haven’t forgotten you,” even on the days when the world feels heavy.
The warmed cups, the salted eggs, the careful knife they become a language spoken without sound.
It honours the truth that tiredness is not a flaw but a human condition that deserves gentleness.
There is a tenderness in not asking the other to be more than they can be in that moment.
Even the chores turn into small acts of devotion, a way of tending to the fragile space you share.
The doorway kiss feels like a soft seal on the day, a promise made with breath rather than words.
Repetition becomes a form of love, a rhythm of choosing each other in the ordinary.
In the end, the poem reminds us that staying is a daily offering, made with hands that remain open.