Center Poem by Henrietta Ezegbe

It took them a long time
to recognize their center.
Longer still
to trust its quiet gravity,
that steady place beneath the noise,
beneath the striving,
beneath the reflex to chase
what glitters and vanishes.

For years
they mistook movement for meaning.
Called urgency purpose.
Let distraction dress itself as destiny
and applauded its entrance.

But the center does not perform.
It does not bargain.
It does not shimmer.

It waits,
like bedrock under river rush,
like the eye that does not spin
though the storm insists.

It is a stillness that does not advertise.
A ground that does not compete.
A quiet joy that asks for nothing
except full arrival.

When they finally stood inside it,
when their own feet
rested without reaching,
something irreversible settled.

They became exact.

Not rigid.
Not closed.
But exact.

They learned the texture of disruption,
the silk-gloved tug at their edges,
the old ache speaking in a new voice.

They recognize it.
Flattery.
Urgency.
Nostalgia.
Fear.

Each one knocks.
None are invited in.

Because the center was not given.
It was uncovered,
brushed clean of hunger and noise,
claimed in the slow undoing
of everything that scattered them.

They will not trade it
for applause,
for speed,
for the bright theater of almost.

They dwell there now.

The storm spends itself
elsewhere.