Mature love.

(Brotherly Peace)

"There is a love that is not born in childhood, but when we already know what it means to take care of each other."

They had hurt each other many times in their childhood.

Not just with words – with looks, with silence, with the kind of hardness that only those who do not yet understand what they are causing know.

The boy carried this inside him for a long time.

Not as anger, more like an old coat that he had outgrown but still hung in the closet.

Years passed.

Life had worked on both of them.

Not at the same time, not in the same way.

When they got close to each other again, they were no longer children.

They did not compete.

They did not look for who was right.

They just listened to each other.

The woman no longer hurt.

She helped.

She listened.

And there was something new in her: that quiet understanding that only those who have seen loss can learn.

And the boy noticed that he no longer had to defend himself.

He didn't have to look back.

The past hadn't disappeared, but it had lost its edge.

They hadn't talked about what had happened in the past.

They hadn't settled their scores.

They hadn't apologized.

They were simply present for each other.

And the love that couldn't be born then had arrived now.

Not passionately.

Not loudly.

But in the way that mature things usually do:

surely,

calmly,

reliably.

The boy sometimes thought:

It would have been better if this had come sooner.

Then he let go of that thought.

Because he realized:

Not all love begins in childhood.

Some wait until you're quiet enough for it.

And when it's mature, it doesn't ask for proof.

It just stays.

"Mature love doesn't rush.

It waits until you're grown up for it."