Panashe Chigwedere Poet Spoken Word

When You Became Home

Let me tell you what love sounds like when it’s not in a rush.  
It sounds like your name on my lips at 2am,  
not because I’m lonely,  
but because saying you out loud is the closest thing I have to prayer.

It’s in the way I listen.  
Not just to your words,  
but to the silence between them.  
To the sigh you don’t explain.  
To the laugh you try to hide.  
I collect the little pieces of you like sacred things,  
and I keep them where it’s safe right here, in me.

Love is touch that doesn’t demand.  
It’s my thumb tracing slow circles on the back of your hand  
until your shoulders remember how to fall.  
It’s pulling the blanket up over you when you’ve drifted off mid-sentence,  
and whispering “I’ve got you” to the dark,  
even though you’re already asleep.  
It’s forehead to forehead,  
breath for breath,  
like we’re trading pieces of our souls  
and neither of us is afraid to be indebted.

Love is words.  
The clumsy, honest, 3am kind.  
“I’m proud of you” on the days you don’t feel proud of yourself.  
“I choose you” on the ordinary Tuesdays.  
“I see you” when the world only sees what you do.  
And “Stay” — not as a cage,  
but as an invitation to keep becoming, together.

Love is gifts, but not the kind that come in bags.  
It’s remembering how you take your coffee.  
It’s sending you that song because one line sounded like us.  
It’s showing up with soup when your world has a fever.  
It’s making space in my life and calling it yours.

Love is service.  
It’s me carrying what’s heavy so your hands are free.  
It’s you staying up to talk me down from my own storm.
We don’t keep score. We keep each other.

Love is time.  
Undivided, phone-down, world-away time.  
Walks with no destination.  
Long drives with your head on my shoulder.  
Sitting on the floor, talking about nothing  
until nothing becomes everything.

And yes love is desire.  
It’s the way my heart stutters when you walk in.  
It’s reverent touch, like you’re a poem I’m afraid to crease.  
It’s looking at you and thinking:  
“Out of all the people in this world,  
the universe let me get to love this one.”

I don’t want to skim the surface of you.  
I want the depths.    
I want to be the safe place where you exhale.  
I want to be the reason you believe good things are still possible.

Because you didn’t just become someone I like.  
You became home.  
And I’m not going anywhere.

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