"There is a kind of love called maintenance," says UA Fanthorpe in the poem "Atlas." That sensible concern for another that is expressed not in lavish trips or expensive gifts but in everyday acts of kindness. Knowing where you keep the rarely used kitchen gadgets or when the tax bill is due or how to assemble the food processor. Making a café au lait at the precise strength and temperature that your loved one likes. Doing the chore that your partner hates, and not complaining that that unpleasant task always falls to you because you know you, too, let them do things you despise.

Maintenance love is canceling a trip because your spouse was just diagnosed with cancer and telling them that you wouldn't want to be anywhere else but by their side. Maintenance love is learning to cook a whole new menu of dishes because your child is allergic to a plethora of foods. Maintenance love is staying on the phone for as long as your adult child needs because they just want to hear the sound of a friendly voice.

Maintenance love, as UA Fanthorpe suggests, is holding up another person, providing unwavering support as the winds of life huff and puff, and threaten to blow everything down. Maintenance love is realizing that as you hold up the one you love, they—in turn—are holding you up.

— UA Fanthorpe

There is a kind of love called maintenance

Which stores the WD40 and knows when to use it;

Which checks the insurance, and doesn’t forget

The milkman; which remembers to plant bulbs;

Which answers letters; which knows the way

The money goes; which deals with dentists

And Road Fund Tax and meeting trains,

And postcards to the lonely; which upholds

The permanently rickety elaborate

Structures of living, which is Atlas.

And maintenance is the sensible side of love,

Which knows what time and weather are doing

To my brickwork; insulates my faulty wiring;

Laughs at my dryrotten jokes; remembers

My need for gloss and grouting; which keeps

My suspect edifice upright in air,

As Atlas did the sky.