There was laughter between us.
Not the kind people perform.
The real kind.
It came easy.
Like water finding stone.
It rose in the pauses.
Over nothing.
Over everything.
A look.
A wrong word.
The way your eyes betrayed joy
before your mouth did.
We laughed as if the world
had not made its demands.
As if time had loosened its belt
and sat down with us.
There is truth in shared laughter.
More than in long speeches.
It tells you who can stay.
But with you
even silence smiled.
And I think of this often,
how some people arrive
not with thunder
but with a laugh
that makes a place feel warmer.
It is a small thing, laughter.
Men say that.
They are wrong.
I have known silence with many.
Heavy silence.
The kind that asks to be survived.
It is how the heart
lets down its guard.
How strangers move closer.
How something living begins.
There was laughter between us.
And if all I keep of us
is that bright sound
rising against the dark,
it will be enough.
Because some loves are spoken.
Some are touched.
Some are only known
by the way two people laugh
and forget for a moment
the world was ever hard.
I would know you again
by that laughter.
Even in another life.
