I love you
I love you,
Which is to say I knew your name before the language that created it.
Not in this life alone, but in the older country of the soul,
Where longing was first taught to dust,
And rivers were still learning the shape of their banks.
I have loved you with the patience of buried things,
With the endurance of roots threading themselves through centuries of darkness,
With the quiet certainty of seeds sleeping beneath winter while carrying entire springs
Within their small fragile bodies.
You are soil to me,
Ancient soil,
The kind that remembers the footsteps of forgotten kings and the bones of extinct forests.
The kind that has swallowed entire empires and returned them as wildflowers.
The kind that keeps every ruin entrusted to it and transforms every ending to nourishment.
For years I wandered the earth mistaking stone for sanctuary and drought for destiny,
Carrying my unopened life from season to season.
Until I came upon you and felt something old within me stir awake,
Something older than desire, older than memory, even older than hope
Perhaps this is why loving you feels less like falling and more like remembering.
As though my heart has spent lifetimes searching for the ground from which it was separated.
As though every road I have ever walked was merely a root tracing it's way back to the earth.
Copyright © Ayanda Dlanga | Year Posted 2026
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