A Chapter Written in Print

I met you through a friend,

and perhaps there was a reason,

an intention I never quite understood

or maybe time simply erased it,

as it often does.

Because of the bro code,

I have learned not to ask too many questions

about the ladies friends bring around.

I meet them, I smile, I move along,

and after a few months,

their names become distant echoes.

But somehow,

yours stayed.

Omowunmi.

Royalty.

Kunmi.

Three names for one woman

I never expected to remember.

Then, somewhere between

a message and another,

I discovered you were easy to talk to

the kind of person whose conversations

don't need an audience.

An introvert,

quiet in a world that often mistakes silence

for emptiness.

But I have come to realize

that silence can be a printing press too;

it takes the things we don't say,

presses them into thought,

and leaves impressions

deeper than noise ever could.

And your world is print.

You say you're only learning the ropes,

still finding your way through the pages,

still discovering the language

of ink, paper, deadlines,

and everything that lives between them.

But perhaps you don't see

what I see from the outside.

Some people enter a craft

to learn how it works.

Others enter it

because the craft has been waiting for them.

I think you are the latter.

Today, you may call yourself

a student of the print world,

but I can already imagine

the woman you are becoming

steady hands, discerning eyes,

a mind that knows what belongs on the page

and what deserves to be left in the margins.

Maybe one day,

you won't simply work in that world.

You'll rule it.

Not loudly.

Not by demanding a crown,

but by becoming so good

that the crown finds its way to you.

A queen of print.

And here I am,

putting these thoughts on a sheet

that is bound to pass through your hands,

perhaps through your world of paper and ink,

a little irony I couldn't resist.

But don't mistake these words

for the whole story.

They are only a page.

A small chapter

in the book of Omowunmi and me.

A chapter that began

with a friend,

a forgotten intention,

and a name I somehow remembered.

A chapter that grew through conversations,

through discovering the quiet woman

behind the names Royalty and Kunmi.

And perhaps that's all this is meant to be

a chapter.

Not the ending.

Not a conclusion.

Just a page

in a story still being written.

And if your life is truly a book,

as I suspect it is,

then this is merely one sheet

waiting to be turned.

The ink is still wet.

The pages are still many.

And somewhere ahead,

perhaps,

the queen is still becoming.