Some days, I think home is a place, but mostly I know it’s a feeling that slips in when I’m not looking for it. Like last Friday, when I was fussing in the kitchen at a friend’s place, half-distracted, trying to plate some greens before the chicken dried out. My friend Dez slid in next to me, not with some grand gesture, just a quiet hand reaching for the pepper shaker I couldn’t find. She didn’t say anything, just bumped her shoulder into mine, a little nudge like, “I see you, you’re here, you belong.”
It was nothing big. Just a soft moment, Dez humming some Brandy song under her breath while I tried not to burn the cornbread. The kind of everyday magic you almost miss if you’re busy looking for fireworks or declarations. Her presence said what words didn’t: even on days I feel a little sideways in the world, there’s space for me at her table, and in her kitchen too.
That’s the thing about being held by community. Sometimes it’s loud, but mostly it’s this—someone knowing how you like your collards, or passing you the pepper before you ask, or laughing at your terrible joke about how cornbread is just cake that grew up in the South. It’s being understood without having to explain all your edges. Dez didn’t need to say she saw me. I felt it in the way she moved, in the hush between us, in the comfort of being myself in a room where I’m known.
I think about that sometimes—how belonging isn’t always a parade or a speech. Sometimes it’s just a shoulder bump in a warm kitchen, greens and cornbread on the stove, and somebody humming next to you like home.