I think of love and marriage in the same way I do plants: We have

Host: The rain had just ended, leaving the city breathing and glistening, its streets shining like the skin of something newly born. The air was cool and sweet with the scent of earth and petrichor, and inside a narrow greenhouse café, the night felt alive — a soft chorus of dripping water, the rustle of leaves, the whisper of growing things.

Lanterns hung from vines overhead, their light dappled and trembling across the plants that surrounded every table. The world here was half garden, half dream.

At one corner table, Jack sat in a patch of dim gold light, his grey eyes fixed on a small notebook. Across from him, Jeeny reached out to touch a leaf curling from a nearby pot, brushing away a droplet of water as if coaxing it back to life.

Between them, written on a folded page, were words that glowed with a strange tenderness:

“I think of love and marriage in the same way I do plants: We have perennials and annuals. The perennial plant blooms, goes away, and comes back. The annual blooms for just a season, and then winter arrives and takes it out for good. But it’s still enriched the soil for the next flower to bloom. In the same way, no love is wasted.” — Glennon Doyle Melton

Jeeny: (softly) Isn’t that beautiful? The idea that no love is wasted.

Jack: (half-smiling) It’s beautiful, sure. But it’s also convenient. It makes failure sound poetic.

Jeeny: (gently) Maybe failure is poetic, Jack. Maybe it’s just love’s way of changing form.

Jack: (sighing) I knew you’d say that. You always make endings sound like beginnings.

Host: The rain outside began again, faint and rhythmic — not heavy enough to drown, just enough to sing. The plants swayed slightly in the breeze that slipped through the open door.

Jeeny: (smiling faintly) Maybe because I believe they are. Every love leaves something behind — a lesson, a scar, a better way to see someone else next time.

Jack: (dryly) Or a worse one.

Jeeny: (laughing softly) That too. Growth isn’t always gentle.

Host: The light caught the edge of her face, softening her features, reflecting in her dark eyes — eyes that seemed to hold equal parts hope and memory.

Jack: (leaning forward) You know what bothers me about that quote? It sounds like a romantic obituary. “The annual blooms for a season” — nice metaphor, but it’s still dead. You can wrap it in poetry, but love lost is still loss.

Jeeny: (quietly) But loss isn’t waste, Jack. That’s what she’s saying. Love doesn’t vanish — it transforms. It enriches the soil of who we are.

Jack: (murmuring) “Enriches the soil.” You make heartbreak sound like compost.

Jeeny: (smiling) Maybe it is. What do you think we grow from, if not what’s broken down before?

Host: The rain intensified slightly, the rhythm steady and alive — like the pulse of the world outside their glass cocoon. The air smelled of damp leaves and quiet honesty.

Jack: (after a pause) You really believe that, don’t you? That no love is wasted?

Jeeny: (softly) I have to. Otherwise, every goodbye would be a grave.

Jack: (sighing) You always find a way to forgive love for dying.

Jeeny: (gently) Because love doesn’t die, Jack. People do. Expectations do. But love — real love — it just moves, takes new shape, finds another soil.

Host: Her voice trembled like the last leaf in autumn — fragile but fierce in its defiance. Jack leaned back, running a hand through his hair, watching her, his expression softening.

Jack: (quietly) You make it sound like love’s a gardener — pruning us, replanting us.

Jeeny: (smiling faintly) Maybe it is. Maybe every heartbreak is just a repotting.

Jack: (chuckling) Repotting? That’s one way to make it sound less tragic.

Jeeny: (leaning in) Why does it have to be tragic? Love ending doesn’t mean it failed. Some things bloom best for a season. The fact that they end doesn’t make them less real.

Host: The rain slowed again, softening into mist. The lamplight flickered, dancing over the small leaves around them — each glistening like a memory caught mid-breath.

Jack: (after a long silence) I used to think love that ended was a mistake. Like you chose wrong, trusted wrong, believed wrong.

Jeeny: (softly) Maybe you chose exactly right — for who you were then.

Jack: (murmuring) And who I was then doesn’t exist anymore.

Jeeny: (smiling) Exactly. But what he loved, and what he lost — that’s what shaped the man sitting here now. That’s the soil.

Host: The light around them shifted, warmer now — as if something unseen had turned in the air, some invisible recognition between two hearts that had stopped pretending to be untouched by time.

Jack: (quietly) You think love ever really comes back? Like those perennials she talks about.

Jeeny: (whispering) Sometimes. And sometimes it comes back wearing a different face.

Jack: (smiling faintly) So maybe nothing’s wasted — just... rearranged.

Jeeny: (nodding) That’s it. Love’s a recycler. It takes what we break and uses it to teach us tenderness.

Host: The plants around them shimmered faintly in the candlelight, droplets sliding from leaf to leaf, like the slow exchange of wisdom.

Jack: (softly) You know what’s strange? That idea doesn’t make me sad.

Jeeny: (smiling) That’s because it’s true. When we stop mourning what ended, we can finally thank it for what it gave.

Host: The last of the rain faded away, replaced by the soft sound of wind through the open door. The night beyond was clean, reborn.

Jack: (after a pause) Maybe that’s the secret — not to hold love forever, but to let it change us while it’s here.

Jeeny: (softly) Yes. To let every love — even the short ones, the broken ones — leave us richer in spirit, not emptier in heart.

Host: They sat in silence for a moment, the quiet full of meaning. The candle between them burned low, its flame small but steady — like hope itself.

Jeeny reached out, her fingers brushing a petal that had fallen onto the table.

Jeeny: (whispering) Even this... even the smallest bloom was worth it.

Jack: (gently) Yeah. No love wasted.

Host: They both smiled, and for a moment the world — with all its seasons, its endings and beginnings — felt like one long, gentle lesson.

And as the lights dimmed and the garden café slipped into stillness, Glennon Doyle Melton’s words seemed to echo softly through the leaves —

That every love, whether perennial or annual, blooms exactly as long as it needs to.
That even what fades leaves its roots behind.
And that in the end, it is not time that defines love’s worth —
but the quiet growth it leaves in the soul.