three rules for loving an angel:

i. understand that an angels love is absolute. you may love him with all of your heart but you will never love him as he loves you. you are human and small and your heart has not lived as his has, child. you will not understand his sort of love.
you will fight, but do not doubt that he loves you. he will never suggest taking a break, or seeing other people. the glass in the kitchen will shatter along side his shouting, but do not doubt that he cares. the neighbours will talk about the storm that raged for a week while he fumed, but do not doubt that he loves you. you will not understand how, but he loves you.
he will lay with you on the sofa downstairs for hours into the night, running a hand through your hair and tell you stories that never made sense when you heard them in church, and he will tell you that he loves you with all of him, that every cell he possesses cares for you. do not attempt to envision it. he has more in him than you can imagine, do not attempt to understand. just tell him that you love him too.

ii. understand that angels are first warriors. if your angel is old, he will have been armed with a sword and a shield, and he will have struck down his siblings and watched his older sister be carried down to the depths of hell. if he is older, he will have known a time before war, and that is almost worse.
sometimes, his hands will shake and you will not be able to stop them. you will mention something unwittingly and he will pull away sharply and fall silent. it may not take him long to recover, but he will think about it for three weeks, and hide behind his smile for your sake. sometimes, he will make a reference to events long since passed, and you will remember that he was there. you will need time to recover from this thought, and he will not understand. he finds it hard to remember how young you are.
he is a protector by trade and you are what he has chosen to protect. there is no war, you want to tell him. don’t. allow him the small triumph of keeping you safe. let him lock the doors and windows for you. let him look over his shoulder when you walk together. it will help him to have something to protect, even if there is no war.

iii. understand that angels are. angels are. angels are undescribable. there are not words for how he will look at you. he will look at you like you are the sun on the hottest day of the year in the middle of cloudless sky. he will look at you like you are the first creation he’s ever truly seen. both are true, but neither are correct.
he will describe every inch of you at some point or another, in this lanaguge or that, but no matter how many words you discover, how many languages you master, there will never be words enough for him. you cannot describe the galaxies behind his eyes, the electricy in his fingertips, nor the the softness of his heartbeat underneath his shirt. you will run your hands down his wings a thousand times, but you will never describe it, or how it makes you feel.
your voice will crack and your pen will fall still and you will flush under his eyes. words will stick to your throat and all you can think to do is touch him. touch his skin and his hair and his clothes. touch him everywhere. it’s the closest to describing him you’ll get. the words for describing this will never find their way to you.

tell him that you love him. it will be enough.