Loving You Like Home

Loving you feels like coming back

after a long road of dust and doubt,

like my feet finally remembering

the shape of the earth that raised them.

You are not a place I visit —

you are the ground that knows my name,

the hearth where my tired stories

sit down and rest.

In your presence,

my heart removes its armor.

I speak in a softer language,

one my ancestors would recognize —

the kind that says stay,

the kind that means forever

without shouting.

Loving you is palm wine laughter,

shared slowly under a patient sky.

It is learning the rhythm of another soul

and realizing it matches my own drum.

Even when the beat falters,

we listen —

we do not abandon the song.

You correct me without breaking me.

You hold me without trapping me.

With you, love is not a battlefield;

it is a compound where wounds are washed

and tomorrow is cooked with care.

Marriage, I am learning,

is not fireworks every night —

it is fire that stays.

It is choosing the same door at sunset,

again and again,

because peace lives behind it.

If love is a journey,

then you are the village my spirit returns to,

the welcome call at dusk,

the light that says,

You survived. You belong. You are enough.

Loving you is not running away from the world.

It is having a place to stand

when the world shakes.

Loving you

is loving like home.