Ode to my girls

No river remembers 

the exact moment 

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it became a river. 

It remembers rain, perhaps. 

A hesitant current. 

A stream arriving with pockets full of earth, never announcing 

that it intended to stay. 

Perhaps, friends too, 

arrive the same way. 

Not in grand entrances, 

but in ordinary sentences— 

“I’ll come with you.” 

“I’ll wait.” 

“Let’s have tea.” 

A cancelled class. 

An unnecessary detour. 

A bench occupied 

simply because leaving together felt kinder than leaving alone. 

No one notices 

the architecture of belonging 

while it’s being built. 

Only later, 

when they celebrate 

what you were ready to dismiss; 

when someone reads your face

before you’ve spoken; 

when your name appears 

in conversations with God— 

only then do you realise 

home was never a place. 

It was being assembled, 

one ordinary afternoon at a time. 

We speak of family 

as though it begins with blood. 

Yet sometimes 

it begins with choosing the same people again and again, 

until “I’ll come,” 

“I’ll wait,” 

and “that’s my girl” 

become another language 

for love. 

Perhaps that is why friendship 

never arrives like a storm. 

Storms demand to be noticed. 

Streams do not. 

They gather so quietly 

you never notice the river rising. 

Only one day you realise 

every current has brought  

something of itself, 

and together 

they have become 

the place you return to.

Rifah Tashfia Islam is a Postgraduate student at North South University and an intern at Star Books and Literature. A writer and dreamer, she is often found chasing stories and romanticising ordinary moments.