There’s a shape of I love you that you stop saying out loud
Not because it’s gone but because it’s moved into the crowd
Of the everything around you, it’s become the atmosphere
It’s the air in every room and not the word said once a year
I’ve gotten lazy with the word and I know that’s a fault
I’ve let the saying stop while the meaning stays the vault
Of everything we’ve built, but she deserves the word as much
As she deserves the coffee and the fix and every touch
The love that doesn’t need saying still needs to be said
The love that doesn’t need saying lives in the daily bread
Of the acts and the practice but the word still has its weight
The love that doesn’t need saying shouldn’t have to wait
For the occasion or the feeling or the struck-by-it moment
The love that doesn’t need saying still needs the component
Of the actual word in the actual air between the two
The love that doesn’t need saying still needs I love you
I’m making a commitment here in the middle of the song
To say it more than I’ve been saying it, to right the wrong
Of the comfortable assumption and the loved-in-deed
I’ll say it in the morning and I’ll say it in the need
Of nothing in specific, I’ll say it out of habit
I’ll say it like the coffee, like the daily automatic
Act of making the coffee, just a thing I do each day
The love that doesn’t need saying still needs the saying anyway
The love that doesn’t need saying is the love that stays
But the love that says it daily is the love that pays
The ongoing investment in the warmth of the real
The love that doesn’t need saying can afford to feel
The word spoken often in the ordinary air
The word that costs us nothing but the nothing-special care
Of opening the mouth and saying what is true
The love that doesn’t need saying needs I love you