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The years fall away like a torn veil separating him from me, then from now. It hasn’t been years. There has only been one long day for us on which the sun has never set. We were never lost, and this place has always been waiting for our wandering hearts, for our prodigal souls to finally, together rest.
“I don’t know what I feel, but it’s nothing related to regret. I did try, had been trying, but after that funeral… I knew why you didn’t give me your number. I felt it, too, that pull. I can’t even reduce it to just attraction. It feels like we were this one thing that was severed in half, and our parts want to be rejoined.”
“I don’t think it will be easy, Tru. I just know it will be worth it.”
“Ain’t that the truth. Never send a man to do woman’s job. You’re right. It is a queen move. Thank you.”
“For black and brown girls, the world is full of sharp edges, and with every step forward, we risk being cut,”
I’m a Kimba man, and I think she’s ruined me for anyone else.
She’s my air and her heartbeat a talking drum, telling our story through the walls of our chests. I want us to be one, to be joined and hooked and sealed together.
She feels small nestled against me. The humanity of naked skin and shallow breaths reminds me the woman the world sees as so powerful is also vulnerable. The privilege of intimacy has shown me that, and I fall asleep dreaming of ways to keep her safe.
don’t just want you when you’re strong. I want you when you’re vulnerable, when you’re lost, when you’re not sure. I see the armor you have to put on to make it in your world. I just want you to know here, with me, you can take the armor off.”
That’s what you do. You put in that work if you want the rewards. And I’ve accepted that I have to work harder than everyone else sometimes just to get the same results. That’s the reality girls like me learn to live with. We use it to make us stronger.
“Love is not a tidy thing, Kimba. It can’t ever be perfect because none of us are. Someone at some point will make a mess. The test of that love is how you clean it up. Your father stayed and we cleaned it up together.”
We are made of choices and losses and triumphs and, yes, some happenstance. Ezra and I were made for this moment, made for each other exactly as we are now.
“Study your queen so you can give her what she wants without asking.”
