Selective Access Poem by Henrietta Ezegbe

Loving
like holding breath underwater.

Offering warmth
before being asked.
Anticipating exits
before footsteps turned.

There are people
who enter rooms.

She entered
like a room
trying to deserve
its own shelter.

So she mastered
small disappearances.

The edited opinion.
The softened edge.
The practiced art
of becoming easy
to keep.

And because she survived
by reading weather,
she mistook vigilance
for intimacy.

Mistook emotional fluency
for safety.

Mistook being necessary
for being chosen.

Love,
in those years,
was architecture.

A constant adjusting
of beams.

How much of herself
could be removed
before collapse
became visible.

No one noticed
how often
hunger translated itself
into generosity.

How often
tenderness arrived
already apologizing
for taking up space.

Still,
she called it devotion.

What else
do people call
the slow leaking
of their own borders
into someone else's comfort?

And yet
even abandonment
has a mercy threshold.

A point
where the soul,
cornered long enough,
begins quietly
unlocking itself.

Not all at once.

More like dawn
touching objects
before the eye
fully trusts
morning is real.

A friend
who loved her
without extraction.

Silence
that did not accuse.

The strange relief
of returning home
with no one waiting
and discovering
peace had arrived first.

There were nights
she felt carried
by something
she could not name.

Not rescue.
Not certainty.

Just an unseen kindness
refusing to let her
vanish completely
inside other people's needs.

And slowly,
the center of gravity
shifted.

She stopped treating access
like proof of goodness.

Stopped handing out
private light
to anyone
clever enough
to admire it.

Not bitterness.

Curation.

Even gardens
survive
by closing
through winter.

Now,
love moves differently
inside her.

Less starvation.
More discernment.

Less reaching.
More recognition.

She no longer mistakes
longing
for instruction.

No longer confuses
being desired
with being seen.

And because she finally learned
how to remain
fully present
inside herself,
solitude
lost its sharpness.

What once felt
like loneliness
was often
withdrawal.

The body grieving
its addiction
to self abandonment.

But now
her life has texture.

Depth.
Ritual.
Friendships that arrive
without invasion.

Joy
that does not ask permission
to stay.

Still,
she remains devoted
to the terrifying softness
of mutual recognition.

Still believes
someone may someday
touch her life
without trying
to consume it.

But love is no longer
the foundation
beneath her existence.

Only light
moving across it.

And if intimacy comes now,
it will enter
a life already lit.

Not as rescue.
Not as proof.

Only as sweetness
set gently
upon abundance
already risen.