Stays of Intimacy

It took me

over thirty years

to learn this—

that not everyone

who touches your life

is meant

to build a house there.

Some people

are seasons.

Warm

and convincing.

Arriving with laughter

and late-night truths,

with shared wounds

and borrowed strength.

I mistook connection

for permanence.

I believed bonding

meant staying.

Friendship, to me,

was a sacred exchange.

I gave you

my stories,

my softness,

my unguarded self.

You handed me yours—

and we called it love

in whatever language

we had.

So when the silence

crept in,

when the calls

thinned,

when the intimacy

packed its bags

without explanation,

my body

called it abandonment.

But now

I’m learning—

slowly,

gently—

that some people

are lessons,

not lifelines.

That intimacy

can be real

even if it isn’t

forever.

I am unlearning

the idea

that endings mean

I was disposable.

I am teaching

my heart

that connection

does not fail

just because

it concludes.

Still,

I grieve.

Because loving deeply

is my nature.

Because I am

a Black woman

who knows

how to give

all of herself—

and is learning,

at last,

how to keep

some

for home.