MY MWANGI

"In another life, I would have really liked just doing laundry and taxes with you".

Loving you has been like cooking with a recipe I no longer need to read. With you, I know love in the details. It lives in the small, tender moments:

“I was in town and saw these shoes. I thought of you.”
“They opened a salon that does nails. You mentioned wanting a new nail tech.”
“I am on my lunch break. I know the morning was hard. I just wanted to check on you.”

Love with you lives in repair:

“I know my words came out wrong. I am sorry they hurt you.”
“You can take on this project. Something is holding you back. Can we talk about it?”
“I have been swamped with work this week, but I am here now. Let us talk it through.”

I think of you whenever I hear anything by Manasseh Shalom. Loving you is listening to Mutoriah and wishing he could feel what we have , even for a day . With you, life is musical and not high school kind, but the broad way shout-on-top-my-lungs kind.

Loving you has been delicately baking pastries every other day because you love them, even when I am gluten intolerant. It has been late-night giggles in the dark about nothing in particular. With you, life becomes a book I never want to put down, each chapter more intriguing than the last. Loving you is the familiar smell of books I cannot put down, the ones I love and cannot get enough of.

Your love shows up quietly but insistently. It carried me through postpartum depression, when all I had to do was attend therapy because you took care of everything else. It was there during the hardest financial year of my business, when you shielded me from the financial , so I could focus on survival.

Your love has been present in my becoming. It carried me into rooms I once imagined from a distance. It gave me the family I longed for. It loosened fear’s grip and replaced it with steadiness.

Love has been coming home to you for 8 years.

Love is not a feeling I chase.
Love is my Mwangi.