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Lakea Banks Poem
Before you I move in the world like a sentence
without a period open, uncertain,
forever waiting for something to make it complete.
I had learned to be satisfied with almost,
to make my home in the in-between,
to call half a love a whole one
just because it was all I had ever known.
Then you came not crashing, not demanding,
but steady, like sunlight after a long gray winter,
filling rooms I had forgotten existed in me.
You did not ask me to be smaller.
You did not need me to be more.
You simply looked at me really looked
and said, without speaking, I see you.
I want to know every version of you
the one who laughs too loud at your own jokes,
the one who goes quiet when the weight gets heavy,
the one who hums in the kitchen on Sunday mornings
like the world has no edges, like time is generous.
I want to know what undoes you and what restores you,
what prayer you say when words run dry,
what song carries you home when you are far from it
I want to be fluent in you
not just the language you speak aloud,
but the one in your silences,
the one written in the way you hold your shoulders
when something has hurt you,
the one that rises when something has amazed you
and your eyes go wide and young again,
like the world has just handed you something sacred.
Because love, real love, is not a single moment
it is the accumulation of ten thousand small ones:
the coffee made just right without asking,
the hand that finds yours in a dark theater,
the voice on the other end of the phone
that says I’m here before you’ve said a word.
It is choosing each other on the ordinary days,
not just the ones that sing and sparkle.
So here is what I know, and what I choose:
I will walk every step beside you,
through seasons that bloom and seasons that break,
because before you, I was a sentence still searching
and with you, I am finally, fully home.
Copyright © Lakea Banks | Year Posted 2026
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